From illusion to necessity: building European digital sovereignty in the age of AI

Recent developments involving Qwant and Ecosia, through the creation of European Search Perspective and its Staan search index, illustrate a clear ambition: to build a credible European alternative to the American technology giants.

The challenge is no longer theoretical. It is now about moving from recognising dependency to achieving genuinely operational autonomy.

A dependency that has become impossible to ignore

The digital economy rests on invisible but decisive infrastructure: search engines, indexes, cloud services and APIs. For a long time, Europe built its services on foreign technological building blocks.

For years, many European digital companies built their services on technology supplied by major American platforms, particularly Microsoft’s search APIs. In 2023, Microsoft announced sharp price increases for some of these APIs, in some cases tenfold. This unilateral decision exposed the fragility of a model based on external infrastructure. Above all, it underlined a simple reality: when a strategic link in your value chain depends on a dominant player, a commercial change can quickly become an industrial challenge.

Beyond commercial considerations, there is also a legal issue. The extraterritorial reach of US law, particularly through the Cloud Act, allows US authorities to demand access to certain data managed by American companies, even when hosted in Europe. Developing infrastructure operated from Europe also addresses this reality.

From consumer services to an industrial foundation

The strategic pivot under way since 2023 marks a clear shift: the aim is no longer to capture mass-market share from Google, but to build robust infrastructure, particularly for B2B and AI.

The consumer interface nevertheless remains essential. With around 6 million monthly users, Qwant has a real-world testing ground. Every query and interaction helps improve algorithms and strengthen the index, while upholding the French search engine’s original promise: full respect for users’ privacy, without collecting or reselling their personal data.

This work also makes it possible to better reflect European specificities: queries relating to local legal systems, public services and the cultural or linguistic contexts of individual countries. Search grounded in these realities requires a detailed understanding that only locally developed infrastructure can fully incorporate.

This is the thinking behind the sovereign Staan API (Search Trusted API Access Network), developed by European Search Perspective (EUSP), the strategic alliance between Qwant and Ecosia. It relies on its own crawling, indexing and results ranking. Initially deployed in France, then in German with Ecosia, and soon in English, it aims to provide an independent technological foundation.

2026: a defining deadline

The end of 2026 marks a turning point. Microsoft agreed to postpone the major increase in its API prices until then. This reprieve acts as an industrial countdown. Today, around half of French queries already rely on the sovereign Staan search index. The goal is complete independence before the deadline.

2026 is more than a contractual date. It is a test of maturity: whether Europe can regain control of a strategic digital layer — access to real-time information.

If this transition is completed, it will demonstrate that critical infrastructure can be developed, operated and controlled locally. Otherwise, dependency will remain the norm.

Building a coherent ecosystem

This transition goes beyond traditional search technology itself. It extends to uses involving artificial intelligence. Flash answers, which summarise information directly on the results page, and the conversational features built into Qwant and Ecosia rely on this sovereign index to generate content grounded in identified sources.

The same consistency extends to the AI models used. The migration to Mistral AI models, combined with hosting by OVHcloud, contributes to an integrated technology chain: European cloud infrastructure, an independent search index and locally developed artificial intelligence models.

The challenge is more than symbolic. It means aligning the different building blocks — collection, processing and generation — within the same technological and legal framework.

Towards a new digital path

European digital sovereignty was discussed for a long time without fully taking shape in infrastructure. The rise of AI, dependence on major platforms and geopolitical turbulence have accelerated awareness.

Rather than reproducing the dominant models, some initiatives are seeking to chart their own course: respect for personal data, a European legal foundation and technological credibility. This movement is gradually outlining a ‘new digital path’.

Conclusion: Europe’s moment of truth

Digital sovereignty is no longer a slogan. It is becoming a tangible industrial challenge. The 2026 deadline will serve as a test. By then, European players must demonstrate that this infrastructure can operate at scale.

At the Salon Souveraineté Numérique 2026, Qwant will present the first concrete use cases for the Staan API. This will show how the infrastructure can already power AI agents, search engines and chatbots in real time while ensuring the security of strategic data belonging to European organisations and businesses.