Can a European Company Be Globally Sovereign?

Ericsson between European strategic autonomy, American markets and a worldwide communications system

PERSPECTIVE | Europe needs Ericsson to preserve technological agency in mobile communications. Ericsson, however, cannot remain technologically relevant by operating as a protected European supplier. Its research, standards, markets and supply chains are global. The resulting paradox reveals that sovereignty in networked industries is less about independence than about retaining the capacity to shape shared systems.

A mobile base station installed in Texas may contain technology developed in Sweden, software written in India, semiconductors designed in the United States and components manufactured across Asia. It operates according to specifications negotiated by companies and institutions from several continents. What nationality does such a network have?

The question appears simple when viewed from Brussels. Ericsson is Swedish. It is headquartered in Europe, employs European researchers and represents one of the continent’s remaining positions of strength in global communications infrastructure.

Global scale is not the opposite of European sovereignty. It is one of its conditions.

Yet the company cannot function as a purely European enterprise. Its technologies must be accepted by operators around the world. Its patents derive value from global adoption. Its equipment must interoperate with devices, software and networks made by other companies. Its research must influence standards that no single country or region controls.

Ericsson is one of a very small group of companies capable of supplying mobile network infrastructure at global scale. That makes it strategically important to Europe. It also makes the company fundamentally dependent on a world extending far beyond Europe.

This is the central paradox of European technological sovereignty: Europe needs Ericsson to remain technologically sovereign. Ericsson needs an open global market to remain technologically relevant.

Europe Can Make Chips. But Can It Build a Market?

Europe has spent years asking where its next semiconductor fab should be built. Chips Act 2.0 points towards a different question: which European industries will create the demand that makes those fabs worth building?

SIGNAL | ASML may be Europe’s most indispensable technology company. Its machines sit at the centre of advanced semiconductor manufacturing, supported by one of the most sophisticated industrial ecosystems the continent has ever built. Yet almost none of that demand is European.

In 2025, ASML generated €32.7 billion in sales. Around €28 billion came from Asia. EMEA accounted for just €524 million, with another €4.7 million in the Netherlands itself. On ASML’s system-sales measure, only 1% of machines shipped to EMEA.

Europe builds the machines on which much of the global semiconductor industry depends. But the factories using them are overwhelmingly somewhere else. That imbalance is usually described as a production problem. It may be something more fundamental.

Europe has a semiconductor market problem.

Europe’s Scaleup Fund Is Beginning to Acquire a Shape

Six investments are visible. More than 100 companies were already in the pipeline when EQT took the mandate. The question is no longer only who comes next — but whether Europe is creating a late-stage capital market of its own.

A month ago, the Scaleup Europe Fund was still mostly an institutional proposition. Today it has a portfolio. ICEYE. Lovable. Mistral AI. The Exploration Company. Tandem Health. EUCLYD. Six companies across satellite intelligence, software, frontier AI, space transportation, healthcare and AI infrastructure. The obvious question is who becomes number seven. The more important number may be 100.

When EQT was selected to manage the fund in May, it said it already had more than 100 companies in its pipeline. The underlying investment framework targets funding rounds of €100 million to €500 million or more, with the fund generally aiming to deploy at least €100 million per company over the life of an investment. That changes the scale of the experiment.

This is no longer simply about whether Europe can create another investment fund. It is about whether a recognisable late-stage capital layer is beginning to form.