Survey: Europe’s digital dependence is growing

In core technology areas, the gap between Europe and the United States and China is becoming wider and wider. Over the past few years, China and the United States, the two major technology powers, have significantly reduced their dependence on each other. However, at the same time, Europe's dependence on foreign digital technology suppliers has only increased over the past decade. This is the conclusion of a survey conducted by the Center for Security Strategy and Integration Studies (CASSIS) at the University of Bonn in collaboration with the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communication.

For this purpose, researchers launched the so-called Digital Dependence Index (DDI), which analyzes relevant data from developed and emerging countries over the past 14 years. The index includes four core areas: hardware trade, information technology services, software platforms and technology patents, and measures the degree of dependence from 0 to 1: 0 represents complete autonomy and 1 represents complete dependence.

Between 2010 and 2023, the average dependence index across European countries increased by 0.5% to 0.69. During the same period, China's dependence index fell by 10.8% to 0.43. The index of the United States improved by 6% and still topped the list of digitally autonomous countries with 0.38.

Germany's digital dependence index is 0.73, ranking 25th in the world, and is in the middle of the world along with countries such as Austria and Thailand. According to the survey report, Germany's digital dependence increased by 2.4% from 2010 to 2023, mainly due to further increase in dependence on software and information services.

From a single field perspective, Germany's situation is quite contradictory: on the one hand, among all European countries surveyed, Germany has the lowest degree of external dependence on information and communications technology patents. On the other hand, although Germany is in a leading position in Europe, from a global perspective, Germany's patent level in the digital field lags behind the United States, China and South Korea by 26%, 20% and 12% respectively.

Like most European countries, Germany relies almost entirely on foreign service providers for platforms, operating systems, search engines and cloud services. In view of this, Germany, like Italy, France and the United Kingdom, is a post-industrial country with strong scientific research capabilities but "impoverished" in the field of platform economy.

Throughout Europe, the degree of dependence in different fields also varies greatly: in the fields of digital services and hardware, Europe's dependence index is 0.42 and 0.59 respectively, and the situation is relatively optimistic. However, in terms of platform economy and digital patents, Europe's dependence index is as high as 0.99, almost completely controlled by third countries.

At the same time, scientists also pointed out that the so-called 'Irish effect' could distort the data. Ireland's dependence index is only 0.40, which seems to have a very high degree of technological autonomy. However, this is largely due to the fact that a large number of American high-tech companies have located their European headquarters in Ireland for tax avoidance reasons. If Ireland is excluded from relevant statistics, the trade surplus in Europe's digital services sector from 2022 to 2024 will immediately turn into a deficit of up to 350 billion US dollars.