Thirteen European cloud providers have signed a letter backing the European Commission’s push to end European reliance on US companies, who have dominated the market for the past two decades.
The cloud providers, alongside NGOs and lawmakers, want to see local alternatives fostered and adopted by Europe-based businesses as the sovereignty movement grows.
European businesses are concerned about how US-based providers handle data and comply with European Union (EU) regulations.
Businesses call for EU sovereignty
In predictions made by Gartner earlier this year, European cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) spend will surpass China and North America’s, with spending set to triple from $6.7 billion in 2025 to over $23.1 billion in 2027.
“Our message is simple: Build European, buy European, protect European,” said European Parliament lawmaker Alexandra Geese.
The call for EU cloud sovereignty has come from businesses across Europe, with numerous signatories signing the joint letter. Among the signatories are French cloud vendor OVHcloud, Germany’s Nextcloud, social networks Mastodon and Monnett Social, Swiss privacy software company Proton, browser company Ecosia and Dutch quantum chip maker QuantWare.
Six civil groups including Defend Democracy and Save Social also signed the letter, alongside numerous European Parliament lawmakers.
“Technological sovereignty means that Europe has the capacity to freely design, understand, choose from different home-grown sources, build, operate and effectively regulate the digital systems on which its society and economy rely,” the groups the joint open letter, seen by Reuters.
The European Commission announced in May that it would consider new rules on how US hyperscalers can process sensitive data from European governments, offering a chance for the comparatively smaller EU-based cloud providers to edge into the market and end US dominance.
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