Reconciling Open Science with Technological Sovereignty: Can the European Union do it?

Openness has emerged over the last decades as a core European value
and an explicit policy ambition of the European Commission, in its science and
research policy. Since 2016 the EU became a formal leader in open science and
with its “plan S” it championed open access. Quite recently, a need for a more
“realistic” approach has emerged with Europe positioning itself now as striving
towards “technological sovereignty”. The question addressed in this paper is how
the notion of “openness” can be maintained as a core characteristic of European
values in a world in which the geo-political tensions following the Russian invasion
of Ukraine in 2022, have taken their toll. Particularly with respect to the global
sustainability challenge, the question can be raised how “technological sovereignty”
as opposed to “open scien