Technological sovereignty and strategic sectors: SilvIA Earth at the Complutense Summer Courses

On 10 and 11 June, the European Parliament Office in Spain hosted the meeting that opened the 39th edition of the Complutense University Summer Courses, organised by the madri+d Knowledge Foundation.

This June we attended the 1st International Meeting on Technological Sovereignty and Strategic Sectors, held at the European Parliament Office in Madrid, on Paseo de la Castellana. The meeting, organised by the madri+d Knowledge Foundation within the Complutense University Summer Courses, was the first of this year's more than eighty courses and brought together over a hundred registered attendees.

The programme addressed the sectors where Europe's strategic autonomy is at stake: semiconductors, quantum technologies, defence, critical materials and energy. The opening was addressed, remotely from Brussels, by MEP Lina Gálvez, a member of the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy.

Business and government: two ways of seeing the same problem

The sessions revolved around a single question: what opportunities and challenges Spain and Europe face in an increasingly unstable international context, in which energy and technological dependence on other powers is no longer a theoretical matter. We were especially interested in the contrast between the private sector's and the public administration's views on how to make sure technological solutions actually reach the Spanish market. Companies spoke of speed and access to public procurement; the administration, of frameworks, guarantees and scale.

Copernicus: the technological sovereignty Europe already has

When people talk about technological sovereignty they think of semiconductors or energy, but the conversation also includes data. The Copernicus programme and the Sentinel satellites are one of the few data infrastructures on which Europe depends on no one. And that is where SilvIA comes in, building on that foundation its wildfire prediction before ignition: our models are trained on European data to respond to a problem that hits the south of the continent especially hard every summer.

Thanks to madri+d, Complutense and the European Parliament

Thanks to the madri+d Knowledge Foundation for organising it, to the Complutense University Summer Courses for making room for this debate in their programme, and to the European Parliament Office in Spain for opening its doors. We came back convinced that technological sovereignty is also built from the ground up, with concrete tools that administrations can use tomorrow on their territory. If you manage one and want to see what Copernicus data says about its wildfire risk, get in touch.