Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord with Uncle Sam’s big tech
Summary
Brussels and many European public bodies are waking up to a hard truth: around 90% of Europe’s digital infrastructure is controlled by non‑European (mostly US) firms, and US extraterritorial law — chiefly the CLOUD Act — can override contractual promises of data residency and notification. That legal clash routinely turns GDPR Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs) into a catalyst for public organisations to seek genuinely European alternatives.
The article surveys practical moves and experiments: Austria’s ministry migrated 1,200 users to Nextcloud; the International Criminal Court moved to OpenDesk/European stacks; Schleswig‑Holstein and France are switching civil service tools or building private clouds; but risks remain — for example, local providers can be acquired by US firms (Kyndryl / Solvinity), undoing sovereignty gains. Cristina Caffarra’s Eurostack proposal (buy European, build European, fund European) frames the strategic response: industrial policy, procurement changes and targeted funding, not just regulation, are needed to regain meaningful market share and resilience.
Author style: punchy — the piece makes a clear, urgent case that Europe must move from talking about sovereignty to actually building it.
Key Points
- The CLOUD Act allows US authorities to compel US firms for data worldwide, conflicting with GDPR and undermining contractual data‑residency promises.
- DPIAs under GDPR increasingly flag US hyperscaler services as unacceptable risk for public bodies, driving migrations to European solutions.
- Austrian ministry migrated 1,200 users to Nextcloud for sovereignty and control — not cost savings — proving rapid, practical migration is possible.
- Real moves include the ICC adopting OpenDesk, Schleswig‑Holstein moving civil servants to open‑source stacks, and France running an OpenStack private cloud (NUBO).
- Hyperscalers market “sovereign” clouds (sovereignty‑washing) by hosting in Europe or partnering locally, but parent‑company jurisdiction still poses CLOUD Act risk.
- Acquisitions of local vendors by US companies (eg Kyndryl/Solvinity) show procurement alone can fail to guarantee long‑term sovereignty.
- Cristina Caffarra and Eurostack recommend an industrial strategy: preferential procurement, private investment to build European alternatives, and a sovereign fund to scale them.
Context and relevance
Why this matters: Europe’s dependence on non‑European cloud and software vendors is a systemic risk to public services, data protection and political autonomy. Legal tension between US extraterritorial demands and European privacy law makes technical or contractual workarounds fragile. The story sits at the intersection of cybersecurity, regulation (GDPR, EU AI Act), procurement policy and industrial strategy — all of which shape whether Europe can host its own critical digital infrastructure in future.
For IT leads, policymakers and procurement teams, these cases are a practical playbook and a warning: targeted migrations for high‑risk systems are achievable today, but scaling them across the continent requires funding, procurement reform and protection against foreign acquisition of local champions.
Why should I read this?
Short answer: because if you care about data protection, public IT resilience or sensible procurement, this is where the action is. The article cuts through the marketing spin from hyperscalers and shows what real moves look like — and why a few brave migrations today could either spark wider change or be reversed by a single acquisition tomorrow. It’s a quick, useful reality‑check that saves you sifting through policy papers and vendor PR.