European governments are increasingly moving away from American‑owned cloud and software services, a shift highlighted by France’s decision to replace Microsoft Azure with a domestic “sovereign cloud” while its intelligence agency renews a contract with the controversial data‑analytics firm Palantir.
The change follows growing unease about the United States’ extraterritorial data‑access laws. The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data (CLOUD) Act, passed in 2018, obliges U.S. tech companies to comply with American law‑enforcement requests for data stored abroad. The rule means that even servers located on European soil can be accessed by U.S. authorities, a prospect that has prompted many European states to reassess their reliance on American cloud providers.
Health information, among the most sensitive data held by governments, has already been affected. During the COVID‑19 pandemic, the United Kingdom signed agreements with Google, Microsoft and Palantir to process National Health Service data, despite the CLOUD Act’s reach. Critics argue that such arrangements could expose European citizens to foreign surveillance.
In June 2023, France announced that its Health Data Hub would migrate from Microsoft Azure to a “sovereign cloud” platform. The contract was awarded to Scaleway, a French provider owned by telecom group Iliad. Scaleway also secured a share of a €180 million (≈$211 million) European Commission tender for sovereign cloud services, alongside French firms CleverCloud and OVHCloud and Germany’s STACKIT. Amazon’s AWS European Sovereign Cloud was not selected, though concerns remain that the joint venture S3NS—linking Thales and Google Cloud—could still provide a back‑door for U.S. access.
European alternatives face structural challenges. The French search engine Qwant, once recommended for public‑sector use, depended on Microsoft’s Bing and later partnered with German non‑profit Ecosia to create a privacy‑focused index called Staan. Both remain small compared with U.S. competitors; Ecosia, for example, has roughly 20 million users worldwide.
Public procurement could boost home‑grown providers. The European Commission’s tender aims to encourage “sovereign digital solutions that comply with EU laws and values,” and diversified contracts are intended to reduce dependence on a single vendor. Nonetheless, experts warn that spreading contracts across several smaller firms may not generate the scale needed to build a European tech champion.
Parallel to public‑sector moves, private companies are also reassessing U.S. services. French airline Air France and German carrier Lufthansa have adopted SpaceX’s Starlink for in‑flight connectivity, while French rail operator SNCF is reportedly evaluating the same option. Such choices underscore the importance of competitive European offerings.
Public sentiment is shifting as well. After former U.S. President Donald Trump’s remarks about Greenland, Danish app stores saw a surge in applications promoting boycotts of American technology. Pressure on governments to reconsider contracts with firms such as Palantir, which recently released a policy paper critical of EU regulations, is intensifying.
The unfolding “sovereign tech” strategy reflects Europe’s broader ambition to create a digital ecosystem independent of the United States, China and Russia. Successful implementation will depend on the ability of European firms to deliver secure, scalable services that meet the continent’s linguistic and regulatory requirements, and on whether public procurement policies can sustain the scale needed for global competitiveness.
