SiGMA in conversation: MEP Alex Agius Saliba on a digital wake-up call for Europe
In the “tug-of-war” between Big Techs dominance and Europes digital sovereignty, few voices in the European Parliament cut through as coherently as that of MEP Alex Agius Saliba. Articulate and deeply versed in the EUs digital dilemmas, Agius Saliba is no ordinary policymaker. As Vice President of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and head of Malta’s Labour delegation, he plays a key role where policy decisions meet political influence and digital strategy.
In Alex Agius Saliba, Europe has a policymaker focused intently on digital sovereignty. His approach is rooted in strategic calculation rather than ideological posture. He advocates for greater investment in domestic tech capabilities, stronger regulatory oversight of dominant platforms, and the development of independent European alternatives. For Saliba, resilience in the digital sphere is essential to any serious conversation about sovereignty. We cannot only talk about resilience when it comes to military or energy sectors and ignore digital, he notes.
Urgency to build resilience
In an in-depth conversation with SiGMA, Agius Saliba discussed the EU’s digital sovereignty, Big Tech accountability, and why the EUs survival depends on mastering its digital future. Ten years ago, when you mentioned public utilities, you thought of water and electricity, Agius Saliba says, driving home the argument that defines his mandate. Today, digital infrastructure is the new public utility. From platform services to cloud hosting and advertising ecosystems, the digital stack underpins modern life. Yet Europe neither owns nor controls it. Were seeing that 85 percent of the cloud infrastructure we use is hosted outside Europe, he warns. Our public sectors, not just private, are entirely dependent on third countries. For him, this isnt just a gap but a mandate for action
Much of the European Parliaments work under Agius Salibas tenure has revolved around recalibrating that imbalance. As rapporteur on both the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, two landmark legislative instruments in the EUs fight to regulate tech monopolies, Agius Saliba, a lawyer by profession, helped craft the EUs digital regulatory frontier. These arent just European firsts, he points out. Theyre global firsts. With the DSA, Europe imposed obligations on platforms to tackle disinformation, regulate algorithms, and ensure transparency. The DMA seeks to rein in gatekeepers – tech conglomerates that have grown into data-controlling empires. But Agius Saliba stresses that enforcement alone is insufficient. Now is crunch time, he insists, but we also have to look beyond enforcement. We have to build resilience.
Tech sovereignty, policy and digital independence
Agius Salibas vision argues that resilience is about securing thw clouds our economies rely on. Resilience is not just military or energy-based, he argues. Digital resilience matters just as much. Europe boasts world-class developers, engineers, and researchers, yet lacks the means to scale. Start-ups emerge only to be snapped up by foreign investors. The solution, Agius Saliba proposes, is a Digital Sovereignty Fund, a Europe-wide mechanism to channel investment into scaling domestic digital innovation, from micro-initiatives to full-scale infrastructure projects. Its not enough to lament our dependence on Amazon Web Services or Google Ads, he warns. We need alternatives. Our citizens deserve a choice.
Economic stakes are profound. Central to todays internet lies not connection, but advertising. Online advertising is the business model – its the money behind the ecosystem, Agius Saliba observes, pointing to the triopoly of Amazon, Google, and Meta that dominates digital ad revenues. Europe sees its consumer data funnelled abroad, monetised by non-European firms, and returned as services over which it has little say. Were not just missing out on tax revenue, he notes. Were missing out on sovereignty.
Hardware dependency compounds the issue. The pandemic, Agius Saliba calls it, was a wake-up call that exposed Europes alarming reliance on foreign-made semiconductors. Microchips are not just for phones, he says. Theyre in cars, appliances, health equipment – they are the backbone of everything. The EU responded with the European Chips Act, a belated but welcome initiative. Yet Agius Saliba acknowledges that this is only the beginning. Were already in the second phase of negotiations, he says, but we must be more ambitious.
Europes stand on digital accountability
The political dimensions of digital policy are starkest when addressing disinformation and foreign interference. When a single platform, like X (formerly Twitter) becomes a breeding ground for misinformation, often owned by figures aligned with extremist ideologies, thats not just a tech issue. Its a democratic issue. Europes DSA aims to combat these risks, but enforcement has become a flashpoint amid growing transatlantic tensions. Agius Saliba recalls former President Trumps trade-deficit graphics, where digital services, the invisible imports, were conveniently omitted. They export those services to us, yet pretend they dont matter when talking deficits.
Agius Saliba is unambiguous: if platforms want access to Europes single market, they must play by its rules. Be you a big tech giant or a start-up, if you want to target EU users, you have to abide by our legislation. This insistence has provoked pushback from Silicon Valley. We heard appeals from Mark Zuckerberg, and visited by Vice President Harris at Munich Security Conference to shield US firms from the DSA, DMA, and the AI Act. Yet to Agius Saliba, self-regulation codes drafted and enforced by the companies themselves wont cut it. We need enforceable, independent standards, grounded in European values: transparency, consumer protection, and democratic accountability.
Agius Saliba also refers to the emerging frontier of artificial intelligence. Europes AI Act, the first of its kind globally, categorises AI applications by risk level – high, medium, low – and imposes obligations accordingly. Three years ago at Stanford, they laughed at us for wanting to differentiate between high- and low-risk AI. Today, the implications are clear. The AI Act is just the start: he is now negotiating measures to protect workers from exploitative AI monitoring, ensuring that workers are not robots.
On advertising, Agius Saliba is equally resolute. Under the DSA, targeted ads to minors are now restricted, a significant first step. Yet he warns that further reform is vital if Europe is to reclaim democratic control. He cites Romanias recent presidential contest, where an unknown far-right candidate surged in the polls via algorithmic content boosting on a single platform. The constitutional court annulled the first round, Agius Saliba recalls, because algorithms interfered with the democratic process. That event, he argues, illustrates the peril of unregulated digital ecosystems.
To Sigma, a leading B2B platform, and other businesses, Agius Saliba offers reassurance: Europes digital reforms aim not to stifle enterprise but to foster trust. When you have a safe digital environment, free from disinformation, with robust consumer protections, users engage more openly. That benefits platforms like Sigma and the broader ecosystem. He points out the importance of ongoing dialogue between policymakers and business, ensuring that regulation facilitates innovation rather than impeding it.
In todays landscape, sovereignty is increasingly defined by control over data, infrastructure, and cloud technologies. With Agius Saliba playing a prominent role in shaping digital agenda, the EU is positioning itself to reduce strategic dependencies and assert a more autonomous path forward.
