BRUSSELS — The European Commission’s vice president Henna Virkkunen sounded the alarm about Europe’s dependence on foreign technology on Tuesday, saying “it’s very clear that Europe is having our independence moment.”

“During the last year, everybody has really realized how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies,” she said at an event organized by POLITICO.

“In these times … dependencies, they can be weaponized against us,” Virkkunen said.

The intervention at the event — titled Europe’s race for digital leadership — comes at a particularly sensitive time in transatlantic relations, after U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent threats to take over Greenland forced European politicians to consider retaliation.

Virkkunen declined to single out the United States as one of the partners that the EU must de-risk from. She pointed to the Covid-19 pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as incidents that point to Europe’s “vulnerabilities.”

She said the U.S. is a key partner, but also noted that “it’s very important for our competitiveness and for our security, that we have also our own capacity, that we are not dependent.”

The Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty swung behind the idea of using public contracts as a way to support the development of European technology companies and products.

“We should use public procurement, of course, much more actively also to boost our own growing technologies in the European Union,” she said when asked about her stance on plans to “Buy European.”

Those plans, being pushed by the French EU commissioner Stéphane Séjourné, in charge of European industy, to ensure that billions in procurement contracts flow to EU businesses, are due to be outlined in an upcoming Industrial Accelerator Act that has been delayed multiple times.

“Public services, governments, municipalities, regions, also the European Commission, we are very big customers for ICT services,” Virkkunen said. “And we can also boost very much European innovations [and startups] when we are buying services.”

Virkkunen is overseeing a package of legislation aimed at promoting tech sovereignty that is expected to come out this spring, including action on cloud and artificial intelligence, and microchips — industries in which Europe is behind global competitors.

When asked where she saw the biggest need for Europe to break away from foreign reliance, the commissioner said that while it was difficult to pick only one area, “chips are very much a pre-condition for any other technologies.”

“We are not able to design and manufacture very advanced chips. It’s very problematic for our technology customer. So I see that semiconductor chips, they are very much key for any other technologies,” she said.