Vehicles of Sovereignty. Expect the EU’s focus on technological sovereignty to begin shaping R&D policy

In recent years, autonomy, resilience and sovereignty have taken centre stage in European policy debates. Policymakers pepper their talks with the words, while think tanks and research facilities try to give them meaning, and flesh them out into policy agendas. Probably the most sophisticated definition of technological sovereignty comes from a 2020 report from the Fraunhofer institute, which calls it “the ability of…a federation of states to provide the technologies it deems critical for welfare, competitiveness, and its ability to act, and to be able to develop these or source them from other economic areas without one-sided structural dependency”. This is well put, but the puzzle remains: why now? Or, phrased differently: what perceived problem will technology sovereignty solve?