The PM of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis, took part in the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi as part of a two-day visit that highlighted the country’s ambition to deepen its presence in global technology governance.
A gathering that focuses on creating a coherent international approach to AI under the theme ‘People-Planet-Progress’, with an emphasis on practical outcomes instead of abstract commitments.
Greece presents itself as a link between Europe and the Global South, seeking a larger role in debates over AI policy and geoeconomic strategy.
Mitsotakis is joined by Minister of Digital Governance Dimitris Papastergiou, underscoring Athens’ intention to strengthen partnerships that support technological development.
During the visit, Mitsotakis attended an official dinner hosted by Narendra Modi.
On Thursday, he will address the summit at Bharat Mandapam before holding a scheduled meeting with his Indian counterpart, reinforcing efforts to expand cooperation between Greece and India in emerging technologies.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
OpenAI has joined forces with Reliance Industries to introduce conversational search into JioHotstar.
The integration uses OpenAI’s API so viewers can look for films, series, and live sports through multilingual text or voice prompts, receiving recommendations shaped by their viewing patterns instead of basic keyword results.
A collaboration that extends beyond the platform itself, with plans to surface JioHotstar suggestions directly inside ChatGPT.
The approach presents a two-way discovery layer that links entertainment browsing with conversational queries, pointing toward a new model for how audiences engage with streaming catalogues.
OpenAI is strengthening its footprint in India, where more than 100 million people now use ChatGPT weekly. The company intends to open offices in Mumbai and Bengaluru to support the expansion, adding to its site in New Delhi.
The partnership was announced at the India AI Impact Summit, where Sam Altman appeared alongside industry figures such as Dario Amodei and Sundar Pichai.
A move that aligns with a broader ‘OpenAI for India’ strategy that includes work on data centres with the Tata Group and further collaborations with companies such as Pine Labs, Eternal, and MakeMyTrip.
Executives from both sides said conversational interfaces will reshape how people find and follow programming, helping users navigate entertainment in a more natural way instead of relying on conventional menus.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
The European Central Bank (ECB) has joined forces with Spain’s ONCE Foundation to ensure the digital euro app is accessible to all citizens, including people with disabilities, older adults, and those with limited digital skills.
The partnership focuses on technical advice, design collaboration, and testing prototypes for accessibility.
ECB Executive Board member Piero Cipollone said accessibility is a core principle of the digital euro, designed to empower all citizens in the digital age. ONCE Foundation Director Jesús Hernández Galán said experts with lived disability experience are helping make the digital euro app practical and user-friendly.
The collaboration supports an ‘accessibility by design’ approach, going beyond minimum legal requirements under the European Accessibility Act.
Features under consideration include voice-controlled transactions, large-font displays, guided onboarding, and multiple support options to ensure clarity, simplicity, and control for users less confident with digital tools.
Public input will also shape the app’s development, with focus groups and vulnerable consumer feedback guiding design choices. The partnership follows European accessibility and digital regulations, promoting a user-friendly and inclusive digital euro for all.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Swiss lender PostFinance has broadened its digital-asset offering to 22 cryptocurrencies, adding Algorand, Arbitrum, NEARProtocol, Stellar, USDC, and Sui to its platform. The expansion strengthens its position as one of the most comprehensive retail crypto offerings among Swiss banks.
Direct cryptocurrency access was introduced in early 2024, making the institution the first systemically important bank in Switzerland to provide such services. Further additions followed mid-year, reflecting growing client demand for regulated exposure to digital assets.
More than 36,000 custody accounts have been opened since launch, generating over 565,000 trades. According to Alexander Thoma, the bank continues to broaden its selection as customers increasingly prefer to manage crypto through their primary banking provider.
Trading is available via e-finance and the PostFinance app, with a minimum entry level of $50 for both savings plans and individual orders, a move aimed at lowering barriers and widening retail participation.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
A fresh analysis from Arthur Hayes argues that Bitcoin is signalling mounting stress in the global fiat system as it diverges from the Nasdaq 100. Hayes says Bitcoin is the most sensitive market gauge of credit supply, making its decoupling a possible early warning of systemic stress.
He links the risk to accelerating AI-driven layoffs among knowledge workers. Data cited from CBS News shows firms attributed roughly 55,000 job cuts in 2025 to AI adoption, a sharp rise from two years earlier.
A significant drop in employment, he argues, could translate into large mortgage and consumer-credit losses for US banks.
Estimates suggest a 20% drop in US knowledge workers could trigger about $557 billion in credit losses, hitting bank capital and regional lenders first. Hayes expects instability to force the Federal Reserve to add liquidity, a move he says could lift Bitcoin to new highs.
Beyond the flagship cryptocurrency, Hayes said his firm Maelstrom may allocate stablecoin reserves to Zcash and Hyperliquid once monetary policy shifts, although timing and price targets remain unspecified.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Derived from the Latin word ‘superanus’, through the French word ‘souveraineté’, sovereignty can be understood as: ‘the ultimate overseer, or authority, in the decision-making process of the state and in the maintenance of order’ – Britannica. Digital sovereignty, specifically European digital sovereignty, refers to ‘Europe’s ability to act independently in the digital world’.
In 2020, the European Parliament already identified the consequences of reliance on non-EU technologies. From the economic and social influence of non-EU technology companies, which can undermine user control over their personal data, to the slow growth of the EU technology companies and a limitation on the enforcement of European laws.
Today, these concerns persist. From Romanian election interference on TikTok’s platform, Microsoft’s interference with the ICC, to the Dutch government authentication platform being acquired by a US firm, and booming American and Chinese LLMs compared to European LLMs. The EU is at a crossroads between international reliance and homegrown adoption.
The issue of the EU digital sovereignty has gained momentum in the context of recent and significant shifts in US foreign policy toward its allies. In this environment, the pursuit of the EU digital sovereignty appears as a justified and proportionate response, one that might previously have been perceived as unnecessarily confrontational.
In light of this, this analysis’s main points will discuss the rationale behind the EU digital sovereignty (including dependency, innovation and effective compliance), recent European-centric technological and platform shifts, the steps the EU is taking to successfully be digitally sovereign and finally, examples of European alternatives
Rationale behind the move
The reasons for digital sovereignty can be summed up in three main areas: (I) less dependency on non-EU tech, (ii) leading and innovating technological solutions, and (iii) ensuring better enforcement and subsequent adherence to data protection laws/fundamental rights.
(i) Less dependency: Global geopolitical tensions between US-China/Russia push Europe towards developing its own digital capabilities and secure its supply chains. Insecure supply chain makes Europe vulnerable to failing energy grids.
More recently, US giant Microsoft threatened the International legal order by revoking US-sanctioned International Criminal Court Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan’s Microsoft software access, preventing the Chief Prosecutor from working on his duties at the ICC. In light of these scenarios, Europeans are turning to developing more European-based solutions to reduce upstream dependencies.
(ii) Leaders & innovators: A common argument is that Americans innovate, the Chinese copy, and the Europeans regulate. If the EU aims to be a digital geopolitical player, it must position itself to be a regulator which promotes innovation. It can achieve this by upskilling its workforce of non-digital trades into digital ones to transform its workforce, have more EU digital infrastructure (data centres, cloud storage and management software), further increase innovation spending and create laws that truly allow for the uptake of EU technological development instead of relying on alternative, cheaper non-EU options.
(iii) Effective compliance: Knowing that fines are more difficult to enforce towards non-EU companies than the EU companies (ex., Clearview AI), EU-based technological organisations would allow for corrective measures, warnings, and fines to be enforced more effectively. Thus, enabling more adherence towards the EU’s digital agenda and respect for fundamental rights.
Can the EU achieve Digital Sovereignty?
The main speed bumps towards the EU digital sovereignty are: i) a lack of digital infrastructure (cloud storage & data centres), ii) (critical) raw material dependency and iii) Legislative initiatives to facilitate the path towards digital sovereignty (innovation procurement and fragmented compliance regime).
i) lack of digital infrastructure: In order for the EU to become digitally sovereign it must have its own sovereign digital infrastructure.
In practice, the EU relies heavily on American data centre providers (i.e. Equinix, Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services) hosted in the EU. In this case, even though the data is European and hosted in the EU, the company that hosts it is non-European. This poses reliance and legislative challenges, such as ensuring adequate technical and organisational measures to protect personal data when it is in transit to the US. Given the EU-US DPF, there is a legal basis for transferring EU personal data to the US.
However, if the DPF were to be struck down (perhaps due to the US’ Cloud Act), as it has been in the past (twice with Schrems I and Schrems II) and potentially Schrems III, there would no longer be a legal basis for the transfer of the EU personal data to a US data centre.
Previously, the EU’s 2022 Directive on critical entities resilience allowed for the EU countries to identify critical infrastructure and subsequently ensure they take the technical, security and organisational measures to assure their resilience. Part of this Directive covers digital infrastructure, including providers of cloud computing services and providers of data centres. From this, the EU has recently developed guidelines for member states to identify critical entities. However, these guidelines do not anticipate how to achieve resilience and leave this responsibility with member states.
ii) Raw material dependency: The EU cannot be digitally sovereign until it reduces some of its dependencies on other countries’ raw materials to build the hardware necessary to be technologically sovereign. In 2025, the EU’s goals were to create a new roadmap towards critical raw material (CRM) sovereignty to rely on its own energy sources and build infrastructure.
Thus, the RESourceEU Action Plan was born in December 2025. This plan contains 6 pillars: securing supply through knowledge, accelerating and promoting projects, using the circular economy and fostering innovation (recycling products which contain CRMs), increasing European demand for European projects (stockpiling CRMs), protecting the single market and partnering with third countries for long-lasting diversification. Practically speaking, part of this plan is to match Europe and or global raw material supply with European demand for European projects.
iii) Legislative initiatives to facilitate the path towards digital sovereignty:
Tackling difficult innovation procurement: the argument is to facilitate its uptake of innovation procurement across the EU. In 2026, the EU is set to reform its public procurement framework for innovation. The Innovation Procurement Update (IPU) team has representatives from over 33 countries (predominantly through law firms, Bird & Bird being the most represented), which recommends that innovation procurement reach 20% of all public procurement.
Another recommendation would help more costly innovative solutions to be awarded procurement projects, which in the past were awarded to cheaper procurement bids. In practice, the lowest price of a public procurement bid is preferred, and if it meets the remaining procurement conditions, it wins the bid – but de-prioritising this non-pricing criterion would enable companies with more costly innovative solutions to win public procurement bids.
Alleviating compliance challenges: lowering other compliance burdens whilst maintaining the digital aquis: recently announced at the World Economic Forum by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, EU.inc would help cross-border business operations scaling up by alleviating company, corporate, insolvency, labour and taxation law compliance burdens. By harmonising these into a single framework, businesses can more easily grow and deploy cross-border solutions that would otherwise face hurdles.
Power through data: another legislative measure to help facilitate the path towards the EU digital sovereignty is unlocking the potential behind European data. In order to research innovative solutions, data is required. This can be achieved through personal or non-personal data. The EU’s GDPR regulates personal data and is currently undergoing amendments. If the proposed changes to the GDPR are approved, i.e. a broadening of its scope, data that used to be considered personal (and thus required GDPR compliance) could be deemed non-personal and used more freely for research purposes. The Data Act regulate the reuse and re-sharing of non-personal data. It aims to simplify and bolster the fair reuse of non-personal data. Overall, both personal and non-personal data can give important insight that research can benefit from in developing European innovative sovereign solutions.
European alternatives
European companies have already built a network of European platforms, services and apps with European values at heart:
Category
Currently Used
EU Alternative
Comments
Social media
TikTok, X, Instagram
Monnet (Luxembourg)
‘W’ (Sweden)
Monnet is a social media app prioritises connections and non-addictive scrolling. Recently announced ‘W’ replaces ‘X’ and is gaining major traction with non-advertising models at its heart.
Email
Microsoft’s Outlook and Google’s gmail
Tuta (mail/calendar), Proton (Germany), Mailbox (Germany), Mailfence (Belgium)
Replace email and calendar apps with a privacy focused business model.
Search engine
Google Search and DuckDuckGo
Qwant (France) and Ecosia (German)
Qwant has focused on privacy since its launch in 2013. Ecosia is an ecofriendly focused business model which helps plant trees when users search
Video conferencing
Microsoft Teams and Slack a
Visio (France), Wire (Switzerland, Mattermost (US but self hosted), Stackfield (Germany), Nextcloud Talk (Germany) and Threema (Switzerland)
These alternatives are end-to-end encrypted. Visio is used by the French Government
Writing tools
Microsoft’s Word & Excel and Google Sheets, Notion
Most of these options provide cloud storage and NexCloud is a recurring alternative across categories.
Finance
Visa and Mastercard
Wero (EU)
Not only will it provide an EU wide digital wallet option, but it will replace existing national options – providing for fast adoption.
LLM
OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek’s LLM
Mistral AI (France) and DeepL (Germany)
DeepL is already wildly used and Mistral is more transparent with its partially open-source model and ease of reuse for developers
Hardware
Semi conductors: ASML (Dutch) Data Center: GAIA-X (Belgium)
ASML is a chip powerhouse for the EU and GAIA-X set an example of EU based data centres with it open-source federated data infrastructure.
A dedicated website called ‘European Alternatives’ provides exactly what it says, European Alternatives. A list with over 50 categories and 100 alternatives
Conclusion
In recent years, the Union’s policy goals have shifted towards overt digital sovereignty solutions through diversification of materials and increased innovation spending, combined with a restructuring of the legislative framework to create the necessary path towards European digital infrastructure.
Whilst this analysis does not include all speed bumps, nor avenues towards the road of the EU digital sovereignty, it sheds light on the EU’s most recent major policy developments. Key questions remain regarding data reuse, its impact on data protection fundamental rights and whether this reshaping of the framework will yield the intended results.
Therefore, how will the EU tread whilst it becomes a more coherent sovereign geopolitical player?
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Dutch lawmakers have approved a new tax law that will impose a 36% levy on actual investment returns, including both realised and unrealised gains from cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The law, called the Actual Return in Box 3 Act, takes effect on 1 January 2028 and applies annually, meaning investors will owe tax even if assets are not sold.
Real estate and startup shares are exempt from mark-to-market taxation, raising concern among crypto investors. Critics say taxing paper gains may force investors to sell assets or consider moving to more favourable jurisdictions.
The government defended the measure as essential to prevent significant revenue losses.
The legislation includes some relief measures, such as a tax-free annual return for small savers and unlimited loss carry-forward above certain thresholds, allowing investors to offset downturns against future gains.
Despite these provisions, many crypto advocates argue that taxing unrealised gains remains problematic.
Crypto adoption in the Netherlands is growing rapidly. Indirect holdings by Dutch companies, institutions, and households reached $1.42 billion by October 2025, up from $96 million in 2020.
Officials say the long-term goal is to move towards a realised gains model, but annual taxation of paper gains is currently seen as necessary to safeguard public finances.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
The European Commission has opened formal proceedings against Shein under the Digital Services Act over addictive design and illegal product risks. The move follows preliminary reviews of company reports and responses to information requests. Officials said the decision does not prejudge the outcome.
Investigators will review safeguards to prevent illegal products being sold in the European Union, including items that could amount to child sexual abuse material, such as child-like sex dolls. Authorities will also assess how the platform detects and removes unlawful goods offered by third-party sellers.
The Commission will examine risks linked to platform design, including engagement-based rewards that may encourage excessive use. Officials will assess whether adequate measures are in place to limit potential harm to users’ well-being and ensure effective consumer protection online.
Transparency obligations under the DSA are another focal point. Platforms must clearly disclose the main parameters of their recommender systems and provide at least one easily accessible option that is not based on profiling. The Commission will assess whether Shein meets these requirements.
Coimisiún na Meán, the Digital Services Coordinator of Ireland, will assist the investigation as Ireland is Shein’s EU base. The Commission may seek more information or adopt interim measures if needed. Proceedings run alongside consumer protection action and product safety enforcement.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech, and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Ericsson and Mastercard will integrate Mastercard Move into the Ericsson Fintech Platform to expand digital wallets and cross-border transfers. The partnership targets telecom operators, banks, and fintechs seeking to launch new payment services and reach underserved communities.
By combining Ericsson’s cloud-native fintech infrastructure with Mastercard Move’s money transfer network, the companies aim to simplify integration, deployment, and compliance. The integration is designed to reduce operational complexity and accelerate time-to-market for digital payment services.
Mastercard Move supports transfers in over 200 countries and territories and enables transactions in 150 currencies. Ericsson’s fintech platform operates in 22 countries, serving more than 120 million users and processing over 4 billion transactions per month.
The companies said the collaboration is intended to create new revenue streams and strengthen digital ecosystems in both emerging and developed markets. A global rollout will begin in the Middle East and Africa, where demand for mobile money and interoperable payment systems continues to grow.
Executives said the partnership will support faster, more secure cross-border transfers and promote financial inclusion. The integration aims to help telecom providers and financial institutions scale digital payment services and expand access to the digital economy.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech, and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
Gabon’s media regulator, the High Authority for Communication (HAC), has announced a nationwide open-ended suspension of social media, citing online content that it says is fueling tensions and undermining social cohesion. In a statement, the HAC framed the move as a response to material it described as defamatory or hateful and, in some cases, a threat to national security, telling telecom operators and internet service providers to block access to major platforms.
The regulator pointed to what it called a rise in coordinated cyberbullying and the unauthorised sharing of personal data, saying existing moderation measures were not working and that the shutdown was necessary to stop violations of Gabon’s 2016 Communications Code.
The announcement arrives amid mounting labour pressure. Teachers began a high-profile strike in December 2025 over pay, status and working conditions, and the dispute has become one of the most visible signs of broader public-sector discontent. At the same time, the economic stakes are significant: Gabon had an estimated 850,000 active social media users in late 2025 (around a third of the population), and platforms are widely used for marketing and small-business sales.
Why does it matter?
Governments increasingly treat social media suspensions as a rapid-response tool for ‘public order’, but they also reshape information access, civic debate and commerce, especially in countries where mobile apps are a primary channel for news and income. The current announcement comes at a politically sensitive moment, since Gabon has a precedent here: during the 2023 election period, authorities shut down internet access, citing the need to counter calls for violence and misinformation. Gabon is still in transition after the August 2023 coup, and President Brice Oligui Nguema, who led the takeover, won the subsequent presidential election by a landslide in 2025, consolidating power while facing rising expectations for reform and stability.
Would you like to learn more about AI, tech and digital diplomacy? If so, ask our Diplo chatbot!
