“that while we are still debating the philosophical question of data sovereignty, the world just rolls over us.”

Guy Chazan:

Angela Merkel has urged Europe to seize control of its data from Silicon Valley tech giants, in an intervention that highlights the EU’s growing willingness to challenge the US dominance of the digital economy.

The German chancellor said the EU should claim “digital sovereignty” by developing its own platform to manage data and reduce its reliance on the US-based cloud services run by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

“So many companies have just outsourced all their data to US companies,” Ms Merkel told German business leaders.

“I’m not saying that’s bad in and of itself — I just mean that the value-added products that come out of that, with the help of artificial intelligence, will create dependencies that I’m not sure are a good thing.”