The leadership of the European Parliament (EP) discussed a plan to conduct an internal audit aimed at “gradually reducing dependence“ on foreign technology companies, the European publication Politico reported.
According to the publication, the reason for these actions is “growing technological competition between global powers“. The audit aims to provide “a detailed assessment of the risks to digital sovereignty“ that the EP will face. The internal document also states that the agency could face the risk of “technological shutdown“ during periods of “geopolitical tension“.
In addition, the EP plans to introduce a sovereignty requirement in IT tenders by the end of the year, including for cloud infrastructure and artificial intelligence (AI) models. The implementation of fallback videoconferencing solutions is planned for March next year.
It is noted that a final decision on the transition to European technologies has not yet been made. According to the newspaper, the EP has started using the Qwant search engine instead of Google, and has also limited some artificial intelligence features on MEPs' tablets.