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Paper short abstract

European quantum governance promises resilient futures but deploys instruments that undermine the collaborative ecosystems on which quantum innovation depends. We trace this temporal paradox and show how sovereignty prioritisation turns the pursuit of resilience into a mechanism of fragility.

Paper long abstract

Quantum technologies challenge governance through inherent uncertainty and hard-to-predict development trajectories. European decision-makers and organisations such as the OECD and WEF call for anticipatory governance, grounded in the assumption that proactive instruments can secure resilient technological futures by addressing risks attributed to the technology's assumed dual-use character while protecting strategic autonomy. We argue that the governance instruments deployed to fulfil this promise systematically destabilise the conditions they are built on.

Drawing on European quantum technology policy and strategy documents issued between 2016 and 2025, we trace a temporal paradox in governance design. The 2016 Quantum Manifesto positioned openness, collaboration, and transnational research coordination as foundations of European quantum capability. Within two years, governance priorities shifted toward export controls, strategic autonomy frameworks, and sovereignty-driven national strategies that thwarted the collaborative structures the Manifesto had introduced. Governance designed to protect future resilience fragmented and hindered present-day research ecosystems within their building process.

This paradox is not a policy mistake but a structural feature of how anticipatory governance operates under radical technological uncertainty. When governance systems attempt to govern emerging technologies, they default to categorical instruments inherited from previous technological eras, such as dual-use frameworks. Quantum governance reveals this pattern sharply: governance interventions that attempt to solve a problem by undermining its solution base.

We show in which cases pushing resilience becomes a mechanism of fragility, and how the prioritisation of sovereignty over collaboration, or collaboration over sovereignty, reshapes governance capacity in ways that neither orientation alone can anticipate.