05/06/2026

BIZ & FINANCE FRIDAY | JUNE 5, 2026

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Europe unveils technology sovereignty package

China, Mideast war weigh on global steel sector: OECD

UK’s financial crime-busting watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, which is under trial, Wrigley said. But Palantir denied the report, saying due to tight encryption “it is not technically possible for Palantir to respond to such a request without the FCA’s direct involvement”. Meanwhile, a spokesman for the London mayor’s office told AFP that a two-year, £50-million contract with Palantir to work with the Metropolitan police had been blocked. “The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime were not satisfied that the process followed by the Met adequately ensured or demonstrated value for money,“ the spokesman said. The Met police said it regretted the decision as Palantir’s “technology has shown it can save much more than it costs and that it can improve performance”. – AFP PARIS: The global steel sector remains in crisis, the OECD said yesterday, as China subsidising production has resulted in a flood of cheap steel on the markets while the war in the Middle East has dented demand. “Global steelmaking capacity has expanded steadily even as demand has contracted, pushing the capacity utilisation rate well below sustainable levels,“ the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in its annual report on the sector. The OECD noted that steel is necessary for nearly all industrial activities, as well as being critical in many strategic sectors. It noted that excess capacity reached 640 million tonnes last year and is expected to rise to 745 million tonnes by 2028. That puts excess capacity at more than a third of the roughly 1,800 million tonnes in steel demand last year. Meanwhile, the OECD forecasts steel demand will rise by only 0.9 per cent per year through 2030. The OECD, which unites 38 industrialised nations, most of them industrialised, said most excess steel capacity is from China, at 54 per cent of the total. It noted Beijing had nearly doubled the subsidy rate for Chinese steelmakers since 2019, taking it to 15 times the rate steelmakers in OECD countries receive. As China’s domestic market has slowed, Chinese steelmakers have stepped up exports. “The resulting surge in excess capacity is flooding international markets with dumped and subsidised exports,“ said the report. Meanwhile, the conflict in the Middle East has pushed up energy costs for the energy-intensive industry, while disrupting supply chains. “Co-ordinated international action is required to address the structural issues and impact,“ the OECD said, noting a global coalition of steel-producing nations that excludes China was working on a comprehensive framework to address the situation. The OECD report pointed out that the flood of cheap dumped steel was threatening the financial viability of high quality producers despite increasing trade restrictions. “If current trends continue, the long-term viability of the sector and the national economic security of many countries will be undermined.“ – AFP

o EU wants to boost home-grown AI, cloud firms

BRUSSELS: The EU on Wednesday unveiled its plan for slashing dependence on American and Asian technology, including favouring European firms in the most sensitive public contracts for cloud computing and AI. The long-awaited “tech sovereignty” package is part of a raft of new EU rules aimed at boosting domestic manufacturing across different sectors and catching up with rival companies in the United States and China. But the plans risk further antagonising the United States, which has pushed back hard at the European Union’s fines and rules against American tech companies. Big Tech lobby group CCIA Europe, whose members include US giants, slammed the moves on AI and cloud as “discriminatory” and “protectionist”. The issue is existential for the EU, with companies from outside the bloc providing more than 80 per cent of its digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property, according to the European Commission. Brussels worries its soft underbelly has been exposed after crises over chips and rare earths with China last year, coupled with fears that US President Donald Trump could one day pull the plug on American cloud computing via a “kill switch”. EU tech sovereignty chief Henna Virkkunen, however, acknowledged that cutting reliance on foreign technology providers would not happen “overnight”. Three US tech companies – Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Google Cloud – provide around 70 per cent of cloud services in Europe. Virkkunen insisted the bloc was “not closing anyone out”, but told journalists that for “very critical” sectors like defence, it was “very important” that Europeans provide the services. This will be done through a scheme with four levels ranging from a general obligation to keep data in Europe to stricter requirements in the most sensitive areas, such as security and defence. “We cannot afford to depend on others for the technologies that keep our hospitals running, our energy grids stable and our services secure,” EU chief Ursula von der Leyen said. But CCIA Europe’s Daniel Friedlaender said the new law would be “effectively giving national capitals carte blanche to shut out trusted global vendors from every major

The Microsoft logo at the company’s offices in Issy-les-Moulineaux near Paris. – REUTERSPIC

retaliation by the American president. But an EU lawmaker who has worked closely on tech sovereignty told reporters on Tuesday that Europe “should not bow down to pressure”. “We set our rules in Europe, according to the needs and the demands of the European citizens,” said Matthias Ecke of the Socialists and Democrats, though he expects US providers to remain “dominant” despite the EU push. The centrist Renew group said the commission’s proposal needed to be “stronger” if it wanted to increase Europe’s independence. The proposal will become law after approval by EU states and the EU parliament. Brussels is making clear its determination already. The European Commission said last week it wants to reserve for European firms a share of the mobile satellite frequencies currently used by US operators. The latest moves also reflect a change in Brussels from just regulating Big Tech towards actively favouring European technology. In the latest example, the EU parliament said France’s Qwant would become the default search engine on its Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers from yesterday in a bid to cut reliance on foreign digital tools. – AFP

technology-producing nation outside the union”. The Business Software Alliance, a US-based digital lobby group, warned that the cloud sovereignty requirements “could restrict market access based on ownership and control structures rather than objective security outcomes”. The package includes the AI and cloud rules that aim to encourage the construction of data centres in the EU, boosting demand for European-made semiconductors with a new chips proposal after a 2023 law yielded little success and a push for the public sector to use more open-source software solutions that ensure greater control and flexibility, and avoid being locked in. The EU is estimated to spend €264 billion (RM1.2 trillion) annually on US cloud software, according to a 2025 report by the French consultancy Asteres. The sovereignty push is partly fuelled by worries over Europeans’ data, since Donald Trump-era 2018 Cloud Act allows Washington to demand access to data from US-based providers regardless of where it is held. Brussels hopes the rules will triple the bloc’s data centre capacity in five to seven years, with a rating scheme to integrate them into Europe’s energy system in a “sustainable” manner. There are fears the new rules could provoke

UK lawmakers urge govt to end contract with Palantir LONDON: British lawmakers called on Wednesday for the government to end a contract between the country’s National Health Service and AI giant Palantir, warning of an over-reliance on US data providers. President Donald Trump, with support from America’s CIA overseas spying service. It has notably worked with the American government to identify undocumented immigrants or targets in the US-Israel war on Iran. alternatives through smarter procurement,“ committee chairwoman Chi Onwurah said. The committee proposed that the government should either look for an alternative UK provider or develop its own in-house system. The NHS says on its website that the contract contains multiple measures “to mitigate the risk of lock-in to the supplier”.

“Palantir’s increasing presence across the public sector represents an unacceptable point of weakness,“ the parliamentary Commons science, innovation and technology committee said in a report. Their conclusions were “not ideologically motivated or driven by concerns about the quality of their products”, it added. But “reliance on a small number of US-based providers represents a clear vulnerability” which could leave public services “at the mercy of foreign actors,“ the report said. Palantir was co-founded by Peter Thiel, a right-wing Silicon Valley billionaire close to US

Campaign groups have warned the company’s products pose risks related to mass surveillance, infringements on individual freedoms and data protection. In recent years, Palantir has pushed to further penetrate the European market. The British MPs called on the government to use a break clause next year to end the £330 million (RM1.7 billion) contract signed in 2023. “The UK can and should be aiming for technology sovereignty in critical parts of our public sector and supporting domestic

Palantir’s UK head, Louis Mosley, said: “The committee has decided to put the politics of the playground before public services, arguing for the rejection of technology that is proven to deliver more NHS operations, less crime and better military capability.” According to the Guardian daily, committee member Martin Wrigley said US authorities could evoke a US law to force a tech company to disclose information. This could apply to a Palantir deal with the