Europe can pour billions into semiconductor fabs and wrap it in the language of “sovereignty,” but it still won’t break free from dependence on American cloud providers and software anytime soon, according to Forrester. That is the core punchline of its first Global Sovereignty Forecast. The analyst’s Tech Sovereignty Index measures countries across multiple layers of the stack, from AI investment to cloud infrastructure, semiconductors, software, datacenter capacity, and technical talent. When you add it up, Forrester lands on a blunt reality: the race for technological independence has already produced two clear winners, China and the United States, while everyone else, including Europe, is left deciding which dependencies it can tolerate.

Those winners are not metaphorical. In Forrester’s scoring, China reaches an overall tech sovereignty score of 82 percent and the US hits 79 percent. Europe’s biggest economies barely move by 2030. Germany and Spain rise from 34 percent to 36 percent, France from 33 percent to 35 percent, the UK from 30 percent to 32 percent, and Italy from 27 percent to 29 percent. So if you were hoping that “more European fabs” automatically equals “more independence,” Forrester is basically saying: not even close. Chips are only one layer.

The reason matters for executives because it changes what you should fund, what you should measure, and what you should negotiate. Semiconductors offer one of the few signs of real progress, because governments are spending heavily on domestic production and Forrester expects chip manufacturing scores to rise sharply in several countries by 2030. But more fabs do not equal technological independence, and Forrester is explicit about why. Europe still designs only about 1 percent of the world’s chips and has no homegrown equivalent to Nvidia or Qualcomm. In other words, building capacity on the manufacturing side does not replace the design and ecosystem advantage that comes with owning critical IP and tooling.

Once you look beyond chips into the wider technology stack, Europe’s dependence gets more stubborn. Forrester points to cloud infrastructure and datacenter expansion as bottlenecks, not just because of where servers sit, but because of who controls them. It says AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud account for roughly 65 percent of the European cloud market. That is a market share number, not a sentiment survey. On top of that, high energy costs and planning constraints continue to slow datacenter expansion, which makes it harder for Europe to grow its own alternative capacity fast enough to matter.

This is also where the EU’s policy playbook runs into physics. The European Chips Act is unlikely to close the gap Forrester expects. Brussels wants the bloc to produce a fifth of the world’s semiconductors by 2030. Forrester’s forecast puts Europe at just 11.3 percent, even as other regions expand at the same time. That mismatch is important because it affects how boards and finance teams think about returns on long-horizon industrial subsidies. The plan may accelerate domestic production, but it may not reach the scale implied by the most ambitious targets.

Then there is the “sovereign cloud” marketing pitch from the hyperscalers, which Forrester largely dismisses. AWS, Microsoft, and Google have rolled out European cloud offerings with separate governance and operational controls. On paper, that looks like sovereignty by design. Forrester’s argument is that these offerings remain subsidiaries of US companies. The datacenters may sit in Europe, but ultimate ownership does not. That is the key distinction decision-makers can miss when they focus only on geographic location. Control mechanisms and corporate ownership determine who can steer, restrict, or escalate in a geopolitical or regulatory crunch.

Forrester’s conclusion is not that countries should chase complete self-sufficiency. It argues most countries should accept that some dependence is unavoidable, then manage it through alliances, open technologies, and selective investment. Dario Maisto, principal analyst at Forrester, frames the urgency in terms of external shocks: ongoing geopolitical volatility, AI competition, and semiconductor supply chain risks have put tech sovereignty firmly in the spotlight. He also notes that tech sovereignty is concentrated in the hands of a few global leaders, creating an uneven competitive advantage. His recommended direction is practical, not utopian: nations need to understand their strategic dependencies and build durable partnerships that safeguard data, infrastructure, and long-term autonomy.

For European executives and any board watching strategy in AI-era infrastructure, the implication is sharp: the “chip race” is only the entry level. If your roadmap assumes that fabs will automatically de-risk your cloud, your software stack, and your AI deployment runway, Forrester’s forecast is a warning shot. The real question becomes how you structure governance, diversify suppliers where feasible, and negotiate partnerships without assuming that regional manufacturing alone can rewrite who owns the stack.