Poland’s Starlink row reveals limits of Europe’s technological sovereignty

Poland's recent clash with American tech billionaire Elon Musk over Starlink roaming regulations has exposed a broader European anxiety: the continent increasingly depends on US-controlled digital infrastructure that governments themselves have limited power to influence.

The dispute erupted after Starlink changed the categorisation of its European roaming zones, initially leaving Poland outside the group that included 30 European countries. The decision prompted intervention from the Polish government and demands for an explanation from Musk, as Polish media reported at the time.

“There is no consent for any private company, corporation, or even the world's largest corporation, owned by the world's richest billionaire, to introduce unequal rules for Poland and for other countries,” Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski said at the time.

Under the initial arrangement, Poland was excluded from Starlink's new European roaming region while Germany, Czechia, Slovakia and Lithuania were included. Polish customers would consequently have faced additional costs when using the satellite internet service while travelling abroad. The decision was eventually reversed with the country included in the same roaming zone on August 13.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk also intervened, saying Starlink had been unable to explain the decision and that some people at Musk's company had suggested it was “simply a mistake”.

Polish media outlets like TVP World speculated that the dispute could have been linked to Starlink terminals supplied by Warsaw to Ukraine. Poland has purchased thousands of terminals for Ukraine since the eruption of the war with Russia, while Musk has publicly criticised some aspects of the country's support for Kyiv and Poland has covered the subscription costs for the terminals.

Gawkowski accused SpaceX of treating Poles as “second-class customers" and argued that the issue extended beyond Starlink itself, saying governments needed to challenge unequal treatment by powerful technology companies.

“New technologies offer people enormous opportunities. But with them, global companies have gained enormous power,” Gawkowski wrote on X.

Tech sovereignty replacing territorial sovereignty

The confrontation highlighted a problem that extends far beyond satellite internet. European governments have become increasingly sensitive to the influence of giant US technology companies as those companies come to control infrastructure and services that are deeply embedded in the continent's economy, communications systems and national security.

Europe's technological problem is relatively simple, with the TVP World outlet summarising it as the EU possessing enormous regulatory power but considerably less technological power.

The continent depends heavily on American companies for cloud computing, artificial intelligence and social media platforms.

The European Commission defines technological sovereignty as the ability to develop and control key technologies, data and infrastructure while reducing reliance on non-EU providers.

Cloud computing illustrates the challenge. Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure have become so deeply embedded in the digital economy that Brussels has reached the preliminary view that major cloud providers should be designated as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act.

Once governments and businesses build their operations around such ecosystems, switching providers can become difficult and expensive.

Artificial intelligence raises the stakes even further. Europe risks becoming a huge market and source of valuable data in an emerging economy in which some of the world's most powerful AI models are being developed by US companies. The continent has sought to position itself as a global regulatory power in AI, but regulation alone does not necessarily provide control over the underlying computing infrastructure, models and data centres.

Then there is the information space. X, Meta, Google and YouTube are all American platforms whose algorithms and content-moderation policies play an increasingly important role in shaping political debate across Europe. At the same time, Washington and Brussels are increasingly divided over where legitimate platform regulation ends and censorship begins.

Musk’s grip over the battlefield

The Starlink dispute is particularly sensitive because the technology has become an important part of Ukraine's wartime communications infrastructure.

Poland pays around $50 million a year for Starlink services used in Ukraine and has supplied more than 29,000 terminals. The technology proved extraordinarily valuable after Russia launched its full-scale military attack, providing Ukraine with resilient communications that were difficult for Russian forces to disrupt.

That success, however, also made Starlink difficult to replace. The vulnerability became particularly visible during a public confrontation between Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and Musk in March 2025.

After Musk wrote that Ukraine's “entire front line would collapse” if he turned Starlink off, Sikorski warned: “If SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider, we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”

Musk responded: “Be quiet, small man. You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”

The exchange demonstrated the unusual degree of leverage that a private technology company can exert over a country's strategic interests during wartime.

For European governments, that has transformed technological dependence from an economic issue into a national-security concern.

Building escape routes

Europe is now trying to develop alternatives. The EU is building its own answer to Starlink through IRIS². Just five days before the Polish roaming dispute erupted, the European Commission signed an agreement expanding the planned constellation to 348 satellites and moving the programme into full-scale deployment.

The objective is not necessarily to replace Starlink outright, but to ensure that Europe has an independent satellite communications capability that cannot be unilaterally controlled by a non-European company.

Other powers are pursuing similar strategies, as Russia is accelerating development of Rassvet, its own Starlink-style satellite network. Ukrainian military intelligence says Moscow currently has 16 satellites in orbit and intends to increase the constellation to 292 by 2027 and 924 by 2035.

The effort gained additional urgency after Ukraine and SpaceX moved to block unregistered Starlink terminals being used by Russian forces.

According to the Polish publication, this same strategic thinking is increasingly shaping European policy on cloud computing, semiconductors and artificial intelligence.

Brussels has proposed measures to expand European cloud and data-centre capacity, while the Chips Act 2.0 is intended to strengthen the continent's semiconductor industry and reduce its dependence on foreign suppliers.

The EU is also building AI Factories around European supercomputers and has announced plans for as many as seven much larger AI Gigafactories. The ambition is to provide European companies with enough computing capacity to develop advanced AI models without relying entirely on American infrastructure.

By Nazrin Sadigova