On 6 February 2025, an executive order 142031 issued by the
United States government introduced sanctions affecting the
International Criminal Court (ICC). The measure was part of a
broader legal and diplomatic response to developments
surrounding the court’s investigations regarding the war in
Gaza. As with any such decision, it triggered a chain of compliance
obligations across organisations operating under that
jurisdiction.

As part of the compliance process, access to digital services
used by the ICC was restricted. In a widely reported case,2 the
court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan found himself locked out
of his email, documents and communication systems. Services
hosted on external platforms. No systems had failed. No
infrastructure had been compromised. But access had become
conditional. What appeared on the screen was simple and
unambiguous: Access Denied.

Report 3 in the Autopilot series

This report, the third in the Autopilot series, explores how Europe can rethink its “golden cage” of dependency, and rebuild a technological backbone resilient to external pressure.

Key Themes Explored:

• The Three Gates of Access Denied: Sovereignty is now limited across three critical layers: Systems (the digital kill switch), Markets (the economic lever of tariffs and restrictions), and Culture (the subtle embedding of foreign norms in AI models).
• Technology as Soft Power: Software and AI are not neutral; they carry the worldview of their creators. The report warns that by adopting IT structures, and specifically AI, organisations risks importing epistemologies that subtly reshape its cultural and democratic processes.
• Alternatives and European pioneers: which alternatives are out there and which organisations and countries have already taken steps on the Sovereignty spectra?
• The CIO Sovereignty Agenda: The report provides a practical framework for CIOs to assess mission-critical capabilities and preserve “room to manoeuvre” by designing for replaceability and architectural flexibility.

download the full report.