Digital Sovereignty, Competitiveness, and the Illusion of Freedom

The article exposes the conceptual link between ‘sovereignty’ and ‘competitiveness’ in the European Union’s digital strategy and policy by examining its most recent data policies. It assesses to what extent they represent a conceptual shift in digital policymaking towards a more horizontal understanding of power in line with the EU’s newly proposed human-centered approach and the green transition. Using the political theory of Hannah Arendt, it concludes that EU data policies are still profoundly rooted in modern frameworks of necessity and instrumentality rather than freedom and plurality, and suggests that this prevents the meaningful twinning of the green and digital transitions.