Prepare, Provide, Pioneer: Europe’s next chapter built on trust

Europe’s agenda is ambitious because the moment demands it. Cyber threats are intensifying, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how economies operate and energy and supply chains still test resilience. The European Union has set a clear course to strengthen security and strategic autonomy, restore competitiveness and accelerate the digital and green transitions. Europe should act in three ways in parallel: Prepare, Provide, and Pioneer.  

Prepare by laying the secure sovereign foundations for trust and resilience. Provide by translating policies into usable services and productivity. And Pioneer by developing frontier capabilities that sustain competitiveness and reduce dependencies. Neglect any one of these, and the others stall.  

Organisations working with the EU have a clear responsibility: to act as reliable and trusted partners, aligned with Europe’s strategic goals, delivering now and investing ahead of the curve in capabilities Europe will need next. This means helping translate Europe’s priorities – cybersecurity, AI assurance, data governance and sustainability – into competitive advantages and citizen outcomes, so that the twin transition delivers better healthcare, safer mobility, cleaner industry and more inclusive services. It also requires investing at the frontier, from quantum readiness to post‑quantum security, so Europe can lead the next wave rather than follow it.  

Prepare  

Europe needs trusted digital foundations: secure, privacy‑preserving digital identity; zero‑trust networks; interoperable data spaces; and sovereign cloud choices, all backed by strong cybersecurity and AI safeguards. In practice, that means verifiable credentials and least‑privilege access across public services, zero‑trust architectures that operationalise the Cyber Resilience Act and NIS2, and ensuring that data remains portable and auditable across cloud providers and common data spaces.  

A strategic imperative for establishing these robust foundations is through public procurement that actively rewards interoperable, open and secure solutions, with clear conformance tests and portability across clouds and data spaces. This approach also entails diversifying suppliers through trusted international cooperation aligned with European standards and oversight. Such choices are vital to reducing systemic risk, avoid lock‑in, and reinforce sovereignty by lowering single‑point dependencies.  

AI now sits inside critical systems, so resilience must extend to how AI is built and run. The EU AI Act and the GPAI Code of Practice set the right ambition; our focus is on turning them into real‑world safeguards. We help organisations put in place layered controls: risk classification and documentation, structured adversarial testing and red‑teaming before deployment, continuous monitoring and incident response once systems are live, and content provenance to counter deepfakes in public communication. As agentic AI emerges, guardrails for tool use, permissions and auditability are essential to prevent drift and exploitation. And because tomorrow’s adversaries may be quantum capable, we are guiding organisations through postquantum cryptography roadmaps, inventories and hybrid migrations that protect sovereignty without disrupting service.  

Provide  

Europe’s digital transformation succeeds when rules are implementable, systems are interoperable, and skills are portable. That means secure, standards‑based architectures for sovereign cloud and common data spaces; responsible AI that is explainable, tested for bias and subject to human oversight; and investment in workforce capabilities across cloud, cybersecurity, data and AI.  

Interoperability should be designed in from the start. Data portability across sovereign clouds and common data spaces reduces lock‑in and strengthens autonomy; privacy‑preserving data sharing and consent management keep innovation aligned with European values. Identity‑first security, zero‑trust network segmentation, coordinated threat‑intelligence sharing and rehearsed incident response make resilience tangible in daily operations.  

Public procurement is a demand‑side lever. It should reward interoperable, open and secure solutions, with clear conformance tests and portability requirements across clouds and data spaces. It should also diversify suppliers through trusted international cooperation aligned with European standards and oversight, reducing systemic risk, avoiding lock‑in and reinforcing sovereignty by lowering single‑point dependencies. Complementary skills policy can amplify these choices: portable micro‑credentials recognised across sectors and borders help organisations hire and deploy talent quickly where it is most needed.  

Europe’s energy and digital agendas must advance together. Affordable, reliable power is a competitiveness hinge, and digitisation amplifies the value of grid modernisation and cross‑border interconnectors. Practical steps include deploying grid digital twins, harmonised data models for transmission system operators (TSOs) and Distribution System Operator (DSOs), developing flexibility markets and establishing interoperable energy data spaces that accelerate permitting, improve forecasting and unlock flexibility and efficiency within existing policy frameworks.  

Pioneer  

Europe’s long‑term competitiveness and strategic autonomy depend on pioneering advanced technologies with safety and openness. Quantum will reshape optimisation and simulation across critical domains, from grid balancing and market design to supply‑chain routing, drug discovery and materials engineering. Preparation should start now with targeted pilots that deliver near‑term value, integration plans leveraging high‑performance computing and cloud, and operating models for safe adoption as capabilities mature.  

Aligning with international standards bodies such as the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) and ISO/IEC, and using shared benchmarks, will help Europe set the pace, ensure portability and accelerate deployment. In safety‑critical domains such as health, transport and energy, AI must meet higher standards of robustness, interpretability and certification. Assurance practices – including testing, monitoring, explainability, model registries and incident processes –  should be scaled through shared benchmarks, sandboxes and clear routes to certification. This approach enables trustworthy AI to be deployable at scale without slowing innovation.  

Europe can lower the cost of safe innovation by investing in digital public goods: open reference implementations, conformance test suites and common schemas for AI governance, cyber-resilience and sustainability reporting. These shared guardrails make compliance consistent and affordable, especially for SMEs, while accelerating procurement. Strategic autonomy is strengthened through openness with guardrails.  

By diversifying trusted international partnerships across research, standards and deployment, Europe can reduce single‑point dependencies, build resilience in its tech stack and scale capabilities in AI, quantum and cloud, strengthening sovereignty while remaining connected to global innovation. The decade demands execution: Prepare, Provide, Pioneer – so that Europe moves faster, safer and together. 

This article is a contribution from a member or partner organisation of Friends of Europe. The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.