EU Tech Sovereignty Package — Web 4.0 — Audit

The European Commission's flagship Tech Sovereignty Package — published in the same week as the Temu DSA fine, the Brussels cloud summit, and the Hegseth meeting dismantling the NATO Force Model — includes a Web 4.0 strategy as a core pillar.

Web 4.0 is the Commission's rebranding of the metaverse concept, adopted in July 2023 after Meta had already spent $40 billion demonstrating that the metaverse was not a viable market. The Commission's definition: "fourth generation of the World Wide Web" featuring "advanced artificial and ambient intelligence, internet of things, trusted blockchain transactions, virtual worlds and XR capabilities."

The package that is supposed to position Europe as a serious technological sovereignty actor includes a strategy built around a concept that was publicly embarrassing when Zuckerberg announced it. The document was written by people optimising for comprehensiveness and political coverage rather than strategic clarity.

The ownership-and-control criterion — the actual mechanism required to differentiate European from American cloud infrastructure — does not appear in the package. Web 4.0 does.

The charge: Europe's sovereignty strategy document is a vocabulary exercise. The tell is Web 4.0.

Evidence

EC Tech Sovereignty Package, May 2026
EC Web 4.0 Strategy, July 2023
Meta Reality Labs losses: $46.5 billion 2021-2023 (Meta annual reports)
OneNext 2026 Brussels summit coverage

All audit entries are living documents. Updates are published with date stamps. Verdicts may be revised as evidence develops. Predictions are resolved — confirmed, denied, or extended — at the stated resolution date.