The conversation about digital sovereignty has evolved from abstract policy debates to urgent strategic imperatives. Nations across every continent now recognize that geopolitical tensions, supply-chain vulnerabilities, and escalating cyber threats demand greater control over the technologies that underpin their economies and national security. Yet the traditional tools for asserting sovereignty—regulatory mandates, local procurement rules, and industrial subsidies—have deliv

COPENHAGEN — For Denmark’s media sector, this dispute amounts to a final legal and economic redoubt. While news publishers across Europe have, in recent years, entered into bilateral licensing agreements with dominant U.S.-based technology platforms — notably Meta and Google — in order to preserve referral traffic and short-term revenues, the Danish press has taken a materially different course. Danish publishers have elected to act collectively, asserting a unified negotiati

In an increasingly connected world, digital sovereignty  has become a vital issue for Europe. From personal data and public services to critical infrastructure and democratic processes, our lives now depend on digital systems. But who controls those systems — and under which laws? Digital sovereignty is about having the power to decide how data, technology, and digital infrastructure are governed , in line with European values such as privacy, democracy, transparency, and the

By 2030, More Than 75% of All Enterprises Outside of the U.S. Will Have a Digital Sovereignty Strategy Gartner Sr Director Analyst Rene Buest on stage at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo in Barcelona. Sixty-one percent of  Western European CIOs and IT leaders said geopolitical factors will increase their reliance on local or regional cloud providers, according to a survey from Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company. The survey was conducted online from May throug

AWS launches European Sovereign Cloud with German subsidiaries and EU-resident operations—but CLOUD Act jurisdiction, US ownership, and closed-source architecture mean genuine sovereignty remains elusive Amazon Web Services has launched its European Sovereign Cloud, promising operations "entirely located within the EU, and physically and logically separate from other AWS Regions." The service offers 90 AWS services from dedicated German infrastructure, managed by EU-resident

In 2025, the Trump administration’s open hostility to the EU and close connections with tech CEOs brought long-simmering transatlantic tensions over how to regulate Big Tech to a boil.  The effect so far has been to accelerate the EU’s quest to break its dependence on Silicon Valley and China. Washington’s combative posture toward EU tech regulation sets the stage for more conflict that could imperil the $1.5-trillion trading relationship. Table of contents Defining the terms

The European Digital Summit in Berlin in November 2025 marked a decisive shift in Europe’s approach to digital governance. Convened by Germany and France, the Summit signaled that Europe is moving beyond its decade-long identity as the global benchmark for digital regulation. The shift is industrial and security-driven: 80 percent of Europe’s digital infrastructure relies on non-European providers, creating a strategic dependence governments can no longer ignore. German Cha

Is the European Union moving toward a principle of sovereignty in the digital sphere? Several recent decisions point to the EU seeking to reduce dependencies on China and reaffirm its regulatory autonomy challenged by the current United States administration. Heavy lifting remains to be done: taboos surrounding European preference, divisions over cloud security, tests of resolve in a number of competition and platform liability-related cases. The instruments for an ambitious

How the US CLOUD Act creates compliance risks for EU businesses—and how Sovereign Sky's expertise helps navigate this complex regulatory landscape If your organisation must comply with the GDPR, you need to understand the US CLOUD Act. Passed in 2018, it allows US authorities to demand data from US-based providers, even when that data is stored in EU datacentres. This directly contradicts GDPR Article 48, which requires that foreign authorities obtain an international agreeme

Open Rights Group urges Parliament to mandate digital sovereignty strategy in Cyber Security Bill as Trump threats and £240M Palantir deal expose UK vulnerability. Here's what UK enterprises should implement immediately. The Open Rights Group (ORG) is calling on UK Parliament to implement a mandatory digital sovereignty strategy within the forthcoming Cyber Security and Resilience Bill, warning that UK dependence on US technology infrastructure creates "strategic fragility" d

The Global South has entered a new state of vulnerability: algorithmic neo-colonialism. While global superpowers continue to negotiate trade wars over technology, the rest of the world has quietly entered a new state of systemic vulnerability: algorithmic neo-colonialism. On the whole, the countries of the Global South are not sovereign participants in this new digital trade war. Rather, they have become a source of critical raw materials for the biggest technology companies

Lawmakers look to tie open source development with digital sovereignty and competitiveness concerns he European Union (EU) is set to examine the open source space in its latest bid to take on U.S. tech dominance. A call for evidence looks to obtain insights into open-source software and how nurturing European open source developers could help reduce the EU’s dependencies on American technology firms. “The EU faces a significant problem of dependence on non-EU countries in t

How data locality and metro-edge data centers fuel Europe's AI future AI has become the driving force behind Europe’s digital ambitions. Across industries, from healthcare and manufacturing to finance , energy, retail, and logistics, organizations are racing to deploy new models, automate processes, and secure a competitive edge. Yet a critical challenge persists: many are trying to build advanced AI systems on infrastructures that don’t meet the requirements of these comple

Among the many challenges that the European Union is currently facing, one of significant importance is strengthening Europe’s role within the digital ecosystem. Its ability to establish itself as a global geopolitical actor in this domain will have decisive implications for the continent’s economic potential and security, in all its various dimensions. The ‘Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty’ This premise should already provide a meaningful indication of the poten

Switzerland, Germany, and France lead Europe's open-source transition—eliminating vendor lock-in whilst reducing costs by 30-50%. Here's what enterprises must know about FOSS for genuine sovereignty. Switzerland now mandates all government-developed software be released as open source. Germany's Schleswig-Holstein cancelled 80% of Microsoft licences, migrating to Linux and LibreOffice. France integrates FOSS across public administration under Macron's digital sovereignty stra

Microsoft, AWS, Google, and Salesforce executives admit under oath and in court what their marketing denied: they cannot protect European data from US government access. Here's what enterprises must know. Microsoft's French Senate testimony, June 2025:  Anton Carniaux, General Manager of Microsoft France, testified under oath that he "cannot guarantee that data belonging to French citizens, even when hosted by Microsoft under a government procurement agreement, wouldn't be ha

The Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium has been officially launched in The Hague, with the Commission welcoming the initiative having strong potential to strengthen European digital sovereignty. DG Connect’s Director for Future Networks, Thibaut Kleiner, represented the Commission during the launch event.  The DC EDIC represents a significant step in Europe’s efforts to strengthen digital sovereignty by coordinating national efforts to develop open, in

Microsoft has admitted that it can't protect EU data from U.S. snooping. In sworn testimony before a French Senate inquiry into the role of public procurement in promoting digital sovereignty, Anton Carniaux, Microsoft France's director of public and legal affairs, was asked whether he could guarantee that French citizen data would never be transmitted to U.S. authorities without explicit French authorization. And, he replied, "No, I cannot guarantee it." He said that the co

The use of artificial intelligence in the EU is regulated by the AI Act, the world’s first comprehensive AI law. Find out how it protects you. Table of contents AI regulation in Europe: the first comprehensive framework What Parliament wanted in AI legislation AI Act: different rules for different risk levels Transparency requirements Encouraging AI innovation and start-ups in Europe Implementation EU AI Act compliance timeline More on the EU’s digital measures As part of its

Explore Europe’s sovereign cloud movement — key providers, adoption challenges, and how EU initiatives like Gaia-X and Virtuora drive digital sovereignty and compliance. Europe is determined to take charge of its digital destiny. The EU sovereign cloud movement is central to this mission — ensuring that data, workloads, and operations remain under European technical and legal control. It is a vital part of the broader EU digital sovereignty agenda . Cloud sovereignty goes bey