03 — Research
A Research Framework for Technological Sovereignty
The path of a technology company through the market can be summarised in four stages: entering the market, building technological capacity, scaling across Europe and sustaining that position over time. These four stages provide the Institute with a concrete starting point for research. They allow us to examine how market structures, industrial policy and law shape the emergence, growth and durability of European technology companies.
Research stages
Four stages
Each stage combines legal analysis, economic reasoning and institutional assessment to address a discrete but connected challenge on the path from technological dependence to strategic capacity.
Entering the market
Research questions
- What is technological sovereignty, and how should it be measured at the entry stage of a technology firm?
- Where are Europe's technological dependencies when a new technology enters the market?
- When does a dependency become a strategic vulnerability for a new European technology company?
Building technological capacity
Research questions
- Which strategic capabilities (including energy for compute, cloud, semiconductors and AI) should Europe build?
- Artificial intelligence is the transformation of energy into computing power. How can energy law, permitting and infrastructure regulation ensure that Europe's electricity surplus is converted into European tokens, rather than captured by the best-capitalised foreign actors?
- How can public procurement, interoperability and other market-design mechanisms create credible alternatives to dominant providers?
- How can Europe develop its own capabilities without creating new forms of dependency or market lock-in?
Scaling across Europe
Research questions
- How can European technology companies scale across the internal market?
- What legal, economic and political obstacles prevent them from growing?
- Which legal and policy instruments can help European companies reach global scale?
Sustaining position over time
Research questions
- Should Europe prevent its technological champions from being acquired or its strategic capabilities from passing under foreign control?
- What does Europe lose when strategic companies, technologies or infrastructures move beyond its effective control?
- How can Europe create the conditions that make relocation, foreign acquisition or other forms of exit less attractive?