Looming over the internet lasers and firestarting phones corporations had been touting at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this month, was a extra nebulous however a lot bigger announcement: a pan-European cloud referred to as EURO-3C.
EURO-3C’s backers – Spanish telecoms large Telefónica, dozens of different European corporations, and the European Commission (EC) – purpose to fill a spot. U.S.-based cloud giants dominate within the EU, and European policymakers need their rising portfolio of digital authorities providers on a “sovereign cloud” beneath full EU management.
However the EU lacks an actual equal to the likes of AWS or Microsoft Azure. Certainly, any effort to construct one will inevitably run up towards the identical U.S. cloud giants.
Simply 4 U.S.-based hyperscalers – AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and IBM Cloud – collectively account for some 70 percent of EU cloud services. That is even supposing the 2018 U.S. CLOUD Act permits U.S. federal law enforcement – at the least in idea – to compel U.S.-based companies at hand over information that’s saved overseas.
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However these hypothetical dangers to digital providers have turn into extra actual as transatlantic relations have soured beneath the second Trump administration. The U.S. has openly threatened to invade an EU member state and sanctioned a European Commissioner for passing legislation the White House dislikes.
After the White Home sanctioned the Netherlands-based Worldwide Legal Court docket in February 2025, Court docket staffers claimed Microsoft locked the Court docket’s chief prosecutor out of his e-mail (Microsoft has denied this). Across the identical time, the U.S. reportedly threatened to sever EU ally Ukraine’s entry to essential Starlink satellite internet as leverage throughout commerce negotiations.
“The geopolitical threat isn’t simply essentially the most excessive type of a doomsday ‘kill swap’ the place Washington turns off Europe’s web,” Stéfane Fermigier of EuroStack, an trade group that helps European digital independence. “It’s the selective degradation of providers and a complete lack of retaliatory leverage.”
What, then, is the EU to do? France presents an instance. Even earlier than 2025, France carried out harsh restrictions on non-EU cloud suppliers in public providers – suppliers should find information within the EU, depend on EU-based employees, and should not have majority-non-EU shareholders. Now, EU policymakers are following France’s lead.
In October 2025, the EC issued a two-part framework for judging cloud suppliers bidding for public sector contracts. Within the first half, the framework lays out a type of sovereignty ladder. The extra {that a} supplier is topic to EU regulation, the upper its sovereignty degree on this ladder. Any potential bidder should first meet a sure degree, relying on the tender.
Qualifying bidders then transfer to the second half, the place their “sovereignty” is scored in additional element. Utilizing an excessive amount of proprietary software program; over-relying on provide chains from exterior the EU; having non-EU assist employees; liability to non-EU legal guidelines just like the CLOUD Act: all damage a bidder’s rating.
The framework was created for one tender, however observers say it units a significant precedent. Cloud suppliers bidding for state contracts throughout Europe might have to comply with it, and it might affect laws on each nationwide and EU-wide ranges.
A query of scale
Who, then, will obtain excessive marks? In the meanwhile, the reply shouldn’t be easy. The EU cloud scene is kind of fragmented. Quite a few modest EU suppliers provide “sovereign cloud” providers – akin to Scaleway, OVHcloud, and Deutsche Telekom’s T-Programs – however none are on the scale of AWS or Google Cloud.
Inertia is on the facet of the U.S. cloud giants, who can spend money on their infrastructure and providers on a far grander scale than their European counterparts. Some U.S. suppliers now offer cloud providers they are saying adjust to the Fee’s “cloud sovereignty” calls for.
Some European observers, like EuroStack, say such guarantees are hole as long as a supplier’s dad or mum firm is topic to the likes of the CLOUD Act, and loopholes within the Fee’s course of stay open. An AWS spokesperson instructed Spectrum it had not disclosed any non-US enterprise or authorities information to the U.S. authorities beneath the CLOUD Act; a Google spokesperson mentioned that its most delicate EU choices “are topic to native legal guidelines, not US regulation”.
Even when a challenge like EURO-3C can provide a large-scale various, the US cloud giants have one other type of inertia. Many builders – and plenty of public purchasers of their providers – will want convincing to depart behind a well-recognized setting.
“Should you have a look at AWS, you have a look at Google, they’ve created some tremendous know-how. It’s very handy, it’s simple to make use of,” says Arnold Juffer, CEO of the Netherlands-based cloud supplier Nebul. “When you’re in that platform, in that ecosystem, it’s very arduous to get out.”
Martyna Chmura, an analyst on the Bloomsbury Intelligence and Safety Institute, a London-based suppose tank, sees some EU builders taking a blended strategy. “Many organizations are already transferring towards multi-cloud setups, utilizing European or sovereign suppliers for delicate workloads whereas nonetheless counting on hyperscalers for sure providers,” she says.
In that case, the EU’s top-down calls for might encourage builders to make use of EU suppliers for delicate functions – like authorities providers, transport, autonomous vehicles, and a few industrial automation – even when it’s inconvenient within the brief time period, or if it causes much more fragmentation of the EU cloud scene. “Operating techniques throughout completely different platforms can improve integration prices and make safety and information governance extra difficult. In some circumstances, organisations may lose a number of the effectivity and price benefits that come from utilizing massive hyperscale platforms,” Chmura says.
“General, the EU seems keen to simply accept a few of these trade-offs,” Chmura says.
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