The European Commission has unveiled an $86 million project to develop the continent’s first large-scale federated distributed computing architecture within telecom networks.

EURO-3C, which was revealed at Mobile World Congress (MWC) last week, will see telecom operators, cloud service providers, and research institutions come together to unify existing resources and capabilities under a shared architecture that adheres to the European bloc's standards.

In an announcement, the European Commission said EURO-3C will aim to deliver “cutting-edge digital services” while also “reducing reliance on third country providers.”

Exact details on the project are sparse beyond a short press release. However, a blog post from Telefónica – which looks to be one of the carriers getting involved – states that EURO-3C is “not limited to one conceptual approach” and will instead span “more than 70 Edge and cloud nodes in more than 13 European countries.”

“New use cases will be developed on this infrastructure to validate its impact on different industrial sectors such as transport, automotive, security, and energy, among others,” Telefónica Innovación Digital’s Javier García Rodrigo and Arturo José Torrealba Ferrer wrote. “The combination of advanced connectivity, distributed computing, and artificial intelligence will enable new digital services and optimize operations.”

Joining Telefónica in supporting the project are a host of big names in the telecom space, including BT, Deutsche Telekom, and Nokia, along with IT service providers like Ionos, Capgemini, and SUSE.

“The EU-funded project EURO-3C federates the efforts of a very large number of European players around a common goal: to build a secure and sovereign convergent communications landscape, for the benefit of industrial sectors supplying and using technology, and for society at large,” Renate Nikolay, deputy director general at the European Commission, explained.

EURO-3C marks the latest in a growing line of European initiatives held aloft by the promise of the bloc’s bid to stand on its own two feet amid a heavy reliance on US and Chinese suppliers.

Gartner projects that continental spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure will triple in the next two years. But on the Edge front, the EU is looking to tap into its strong carrier players – with the added bonus being they’re willing to play with one another.

But for all its sovereignty efforts, the EU could well fall flat on its face if it fails to address concerns from its telecom partners, with CEOs of Eutelsat, Deutsche Telekom, and Telefónica warning that the bloc cannot realistically compete with the US and China without lighter, more coherent, pro-investment regulation.

Their concerns may be exacerbated by the fact that continental lawmakers dropped several digital technologies and AI from a list of technologies previously deemed “strategic.”