Emmanuel Macron wants the creation of a European metaverse. The presidential candidate assures that he wants to emancipate Europe from American and Chinese companies. However, the project is not really to set up a public digital universe intended for European Internet users.
After NFTs and blockchain, “metaverse” has become the new buzzword. The sensational announcement of Meta (ex-Facebook) last year prompted many brands and companies to lean towards the digital worlds.
This is particularly the case of Samsung, which has opened a virtual store in the metaverse of Decentraland, Nike, which will launch virtual sneakers or even McDonald’s, which plans to open restaurants accessible in virtual reality. According to Mark Zuckberg, CEO and founder of Meta, the metaverse represents the future of the web, a series of 3D spaces where Internet users can “to socialize, learn, collaborate and play in a way that goes beyond what we can imagine”.
Emmanuel Macron wants to fight for a European metaverse
More recently, the metaverse has invited itself into the French presidential campaign. This Thursday, March 17, 2022, Emmanuel Macron, mentioned the metaverse for the first time during a press conference intended to clarify his program. Anxious to emancipate Europe from the services offered by Chinese or American firms, the presidential candidate assured that he wanted to fight for “building a European metaverse”.
“This is a key subject both for creation, but also for the ability to allow all our creators, whatever their cultural fields and their fields of activity, to create and not depend on actors or Anglo-Saxon or Chinese aggregators, who will be able to completely circumvent the rules of respect for copyright or related rights. This is an essential subject to defend the rights of our authors”, explains Emmanuel Macron. The current president pleads for “cultural and informational independence”.
Contacted by our colleagues from BFM TV, Cédric O, the Secretary of State for Digital, returned to the words of Emmanuel Macron. According to the manager, the program of the LREM candidate mainly plans to support the creation of the underlying technologies that will allow the metaverse to functionlike graphics engines such as Unreal Engine and Unity.
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These technologies, currently used in the context of video games, are far from being the prerogative of the metaverse. It seems that Emmanuel Macron also wanted surf the interest generated by the metaverse by placing the keyword in its program. As Cédric O points out, the candidate does not really advocate the creation of a public metaverse for European Internet users.
Source: BFM-TV