A national vision built on foreign foundations
Greece’s Blueprint for AI Transformation presents an inspiring narrative, human dignity, participation, transparency and international cooperation are placed at the centre of a new national strategy. Six flagship programmes promise progress in public administration, education, research, innovation, cultural heritage and ethics.
Yet one crucial choice is largely absent, a clear priority for free and open source software, open standards and genuine digital autonomy. The blueprint speaks the language of values, but it quietly assumes that the country will continue to rely on proprietary platforms, closed models and cloud services that are mostly controlled by companies in the United States and, increasingly, in China.
Without confronting this dependence, Greece risks building its AI future on foundations it does not control.
Governance that regulates, but does not emancipate
The proposed governance architecture looks sophisticated, a central ministry in charge, an interministerial committee, a national supervisory authority, an AI observatory and advisory bodies that bring in academic expertise. This could have been the backbone of a strong strategy for technological independence.
However, the texts stop at alignment with the European AI Act and at generic references to human rights, innovation and ethics. Nowhere is there a binding principle that public money for AI systems should preferentially support open source software, open data and open models. Regulation without a commitment to openness can easily end up certifying and monitoring systems that remain black boxes, owned elsewhere and accountable primarily to their shareholders.
Infrastructure as a new layer of dependence
Large investments in data centres, government cloud infrastructures and high performance computing are presented as evidence that Greece is catching up. But the crucial question remains unanswered, whose tools and models will actually run on these expensive machines.
The new AI factory, research centres and participation in European language model projects for Greek are important steps. Still, without strong licensing requirements these initiatives can easily produce assets that are locked into proprietary ecosystems. Publicly funded data and models may ultimately serve private platforms, rather than strengthening a common digital commons that citizens, schools, small businesses and public institutions can reuse and adapt.
In practice, this means that even if servers are physically located on Greek or European soil, the software logic that governs them can remain entirely dependent on non European vendors.
Skills for using AI, not necessarily for reshaping it
The strategy rightly invests in education and skills, from robotics kits in schools and national competitions, to online courses for citizens and upskilling programmes for young people. But most of these initiatives frame people as users and operators of tools, not as co creators who can question, modify and collectively govern the underlying technologies.
If training programmes are built mainly around commercial tools and proprietary platforms, Greece will be producing a workforce that is fluent in imported ecosystems, while local open source communities, universities and small companies struggle to build alternatives. Digital literacy without digital agency is not enough.
From dependency by default to sovereignty by design
The blueprint lists priority sectors such as health, climate, smart cities, agriculture and culture, areas where AI can indeed make a positive difference. But if the software, models and infrastructures are owned and shaped elsewhere, the country will have limited say over how these systems evolve, how data are used and who benefits most from the value they generate.
A genuinely future proof AI strategy would treat openness and digital sovereignty as non negotiable design principles, not as optional extras. That would mean favouring open source procurement in the public sector, supporting European and local open models, investing in open tools for Greek language and culture and ensuring that publicly funded work remains part of the digital commons.
Otherwise, Greece may proudly talk about its AI transformation, while its technological destiny continues to be decided in boardrooms thousands of kilometres away.
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Main sources of this article:
1. Progress in Implementing the European Union Coordinated Plan on Artificial Intelligence – oecd.org
2. Ανοιχτό Υλισμικό και Λογισμικό για την Τεχνητή Νοημοσύνη: Η Μεγάλη Πρόκληση και Ευκαιρία για την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση – openhardware.ellak.gr