What Moves the System: A Factor Map and Ranking for European Digital Sovereignty¶

Stefane Fermigier (Abilian) · sf@abilian.com

Draft working paper v0.6, 2026-09-22. A causal map assembled from one programme's verified results, with every edge tiered by internal verification and no external validation yet; the prioritization is ordinal, and the cardinal seed covers the factors the assembled model includes.

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Abstract¶

The instruments deployed for digital-sovereignty policy each score a node: an organisation's resilience, a supplier's posture, an offer's compliance level. The published indices describe levels. Neither says what makes the sovereignty of the whole ecosystem move. This paper assembles a causal factor map for the European digital ecosystem from one research programme's verified results. It has twenty-two factors in five families and a canonical edge list of thirty-two directed edges (twenty-three receipted, nine conjectured, two interactions), with a stated evidence tier per edge, six feedback loops, and one directed chain (the capture pull). The tiers grade internal verification; external validation is the map's open flank. Annex A states the results behind the top-tier edges; every edge names what an attack would have to break.

Confronting the map with the deployed instruments yields the following findings. First, every substantive criterion of the node instruments corresponds to a system factor, a correspondence with a construction that failed twice and forced factor additions, which is its falsifiability credential. Second, the Cloud Sovereignty Framework's published weight vector, confirmed against the primary text, contains no economic objective at all: rents, prices, decision events and exit costs get no first-class weight.

The paper then argues a prioritization at the current margin: a gate-and-driver structure extracted from the corpus's inertness results. It is ordinal, with premises tiered T2 and T3 and rank-by-rank comparisons that are explicitly heterogeneous (marginal effect where computed, implementability where documented, scope where proved). A model-scoped elasticity computation seeds the quantitative layer. The event gate has the largest elasticity on 85% of qualifying draws, but its economic content, the increment above the mechanical unit term, is the largest on only 17%. The quantitative support for the top rank is therefore weak, with the excluded and complement regions characterized. The sequencing claim, clear the gates before spending on the drivers, is the paper's output, stated with falsifiers and the measurements that would upgrade it. One measurement is already in: a coding of five years of sovereignty-labelled EU procurement notices finds structural control verified in 2 of 64 construct-relevant notices, among the 0.08 to 0.26 percent of IT-services notices a year that use the word at all.

Keywords: digital sovereignty, industrial policy, causal factors, procurement, lock-in, open-source software.

JEL: F52, L86, O25, D85.

The factor map, drawn from the canonical edge list: which factors of European digital sovereignty move which, receipted edges solid, conjectured ones dashed.

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Cite this paper¶

Fermigier, S. (2026). What Moves the System: A Factor Map and Ranking for European Digital Sovereignty.
Draft working paper v0.6, Abilian Econ Lab.
https://econ.lab.abilian.com/papers/factor-map/