By Philip Blenkinsop

BRUSSELS, Oct 17 (Reuters) - Europe needs to pay at least as much attention to self-driving cars as it does to electric vehicles if it wants to play a role in one of the key technologies of the next decade, the CEO of Estonian ride-hailing and food delivery company Bolt said on Friday.

Europe's automakers, who employ millions across the continent, are struggling to keep up with foreign technology development, particularly by China and the United States.

"There's so much on EVs but we've lost the plot on autonomous driving," Markus Villig, CEO of the European rival of U.S.-based Uber UBER.N, told a small group of journalists. "It will be the core technology."

Autonomous driving is dominated by U.S. companies such as Alphabet GOOGL.O subsidiary Waymo and Tesla TSLA.O, and Chinese competitors Baidu, WeRide and Pony.ai. Waymo plans to launch autonomous ride-hailing in London next year.

Bolt stands to gain from the launch of "robotaxis", but Villig said the European Union should recognise this as a strategic technology, with security implications, and not just rely on imports.

Villig, who was due to meet EU technology chief Henna Virkkunen on Friday, said the EU was spending tens of billions of euros on various parts of the EV supply chain, but nothing comparable on self-driving software. Traditional carmakers might provide some investment, but did not look set to build their own self-driving systems.

The EU is keen to enhance its digital sovereignty, by reducing Europe's reliance on U.S. Big Tech in cloud and network services and artificial intelligence.

Villig said the EU also had to avoid allowing large foreign players to come in and crush smaller local competitors, as had happened in other tech areas. He suggested upcoming EU players could be offered subsidies and perhaps provided exclusive licences to operate robotaxis in specific cities or regions for a certain period to allow them to build scale.

(Reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Editing by Emelia Sithole-Matarise)

((philip.blenkinsop@thomsonreuters.com;))