BRUSSELS — Europe can become more technologically independent while still teaming up with U.S. tech hubs like Silicon Valley, European Commission startup chief Ekaterina Zaharieva told POLITICO in an exclusive interview.

“Tech sovereignty doesn’t mean to stop partnering,” Zaharieva said at POLITICO’s AI & Tech week summit, indicating that Brussels will have to move cautiously when it presents its tech sovereignty package at the end of May.

The Commission’s legislative package aims to reduce reliance on U.S. tech in critical areas such as cloud services and chips.

But Zaharieva, who visited Silicon Valley last week, insisted the bloc should still pursue close collaboration with its partners on the other side of the Atlantic.

“In the geopolitical situation, you see how fragile the supply chains are, but they are also very complicated,” she said.

The commissioner noted the EU has been pursuing a strategy of partnerships with “like-minded countries” through free-trade agreements, among them India and the Mercosur bloc of South American nations.

“This doesn’t mean to close our economies,” she said.

Technology ties between Brussels and Washington have grown tense over the past year, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and tech executives lashing out against the EU’s tech rulebooks, which they claim impose censorship and unfairly target American companies.

Zaharieva offered a different perspective on those transatlantic ties, saying some U.S. tech executives like Jensen Huang, CEO of AI chipmaker Nvidia, still see value in working with Europe.

The Bulgarian commissioner said she had met with Huang during her trip the U.S., and that he had praised Central and Eastern Europe as a talent hub in its own right.

“Our biggest strength is our talent; it was so well-known there,” she maintained.

According to Zaharieva, Huang said Europe has the best scientists in research-intensive technologies, and that AI would not replace them anytime soon.

The Commission has several plans in motion to ensure that European talent has access to the funding and the customer base needed to scale their operations.

Brussels will seek to tweak procurement rules to “inspire” governments to buy more tech from startups, although Zaharieva ruled out setting “hard targets.”

The EU will also soon roll out a €5 billion scale-up fund backed by the Commission and private investors. The cash will fuel €100 million funding rounds that will relieve startups of the need to seek late-stage funding elsewhere.

The fund is expected to start making investments “in the next couple of months,” Zaharieva said.