The European Union is preparing a sweeping package of measures to reduce dependence on American digital companies and Chinese semiconductors. The fear? That Washington could one day activate a "kill switch" - a digital mechanism that could take down critical EU infrastructure in the middle of a geopolitical confrontation. The package is being unveiled next Wednesday.

What used to be conspiracy theory in diplomatic economics has, over the past few years, become reality. In February 2025, Washington imposed sanctions on judges of the International Criminal Court. As a result, one judge lost access to her Visa card - because the American payment system had control. That is not a thriller scenario. That is the application of an existing infrastructure lever, against an individual, in less than 48 hours. The same lever, in theory, can be applied to entire institutions, entire state apparatuses, entire countries.

The package contains three initiatives: a Cloud and AI Development Act to accelerate the build-out of data centres in Europe, a Chips Act for security of semiconductor supply, and an initiative encouraging the public sector to use open source solutions instead of commercial American ones. As a whole, this is the biggest digital sovereignty package the EU has put forward in the last decade.

Teresa Ribera, the EU's competition commissioner, has said it out loud: "We have to develop our own capacities." Europe, she added, cannot allow outside influence over its own decisions, values and economic services. That is rhetoric that would have been considered anti-American five years ago; today, it is a reality accepted even by the most Atlanticist-leaning ministers in Brussels.

Who is not happy? The Americans. Andrew Puzder, the US special envoy, immediately warned that "Europe will not be able to participate in the AI economy if it shuts the others out". Translation: if you close the doors on our companies, we will close our technologies to you. That is a game in which the winner is not the one with the better ideas, but the one who can hold out without the other for longer.

For the Balkan countries - not yet EU members but critically dependent on US and Chinese digital platforms - this is a direct signal. If the European digital architecture is being reshaped, every country that wants into the EU will have to keep up. Without an alternative to the US/Chinese cloud, without an alternative to US/Chinese chips, without an alternative to US/Chinese operating systems in hospitals, ministries, banks. That is the hidden cost of the next decade of European integration - and it is the hidden cost no one on the Balkans is yet saying out loud.