I don’t think it’s a digital will. I think it’s an advisory layer which is completely incompetent and will always try to lead decisions toward proprietary software solutions because they “job hop” between the public and private sectors. I do not mean this as corruption or shady, but simply that they have powerful roles because they have a lot of private sector jobs behind them. Business leaders who employ thousands of people, and the decisions makers and advisors in their vicinity are always going to have a big role in political decisions. Coupled with many of the FFOS advocates and NGOs being far too “all or nothing” in their approach, where what you would need to be successful is not to swap everything at once but to take small incremental steps so that you can build clear successes. It simply leads to a landscape where the political layer makes bad decisions despite a decade long will and commitment to advance both EU tech and Open Source solutions.
Yes it is about a lack of political will. US companies have been illegal in the EU for a decade now (Schrems II), but the enforcement of this is hardly anywhere to be seen.
It's the same kind of political denial as with being "concerned" about climate change, but still trading with China (even worse when this allows for fake self-congratulations about decreasing greenhouse gas emissions, when it mostly comes from most of the industry having been exported).
I think it will take way more than political will.
The USA is enjoying the wealth they gained in both world wars and they also kept their defacto colonies in the South America and Pacific.
Europeans destroyed their wealth in the world wars and they lost their colonies. Of course the end of the colonialism has ended some of the human suffering but it has a cold-hearted economic impact.
The American venture capitalists are all coming from the industries that got stronger at and after the world wars. They invested silicon and then the tech industries that built the wealth exponentially. The Europeans had to rebuild their countries until 70s and the investments they made are smaller. Similarly the US spent its government money to nuclear and space programs that further strengthened the economy. EU spent its surplus to improve post-Soviet countries which may or may not pay dividends in the future.
It may require significant reallocation of resources from certain places to tech. It may require diverting the resources spent on old pensioners who are the biggest voting block. It is not a simple lack of political will. It requires reshaping a century of decisions.
