The European Union is debating whether Amazon, Microsoft, and Google should be allowed to keep hoovering up government cloud contracts across the continent, or whether Europe’s own tech companies deserve a bigger slice of the pie.
A vote on revised cloud procurement rules is scheduled for June 3, 2026. The expected outcome won’t fully ban US hyperscalers from public-sector work, but it will likely tilt the playing field toward European providers.
The numbers that explain Europe’s problem
Amazon Web Services holds roughly 28% of the global cloud market. Microsoft Azure controls about 21%. Google Cloud sits at around 14%. Combined, those three American companies account for approximately 63% of the worldwide cloud infrastructure market, and their share in Europe is likely even higher.
The urgency has grown since the 2020 Schrems II ruling, which struck down the EU-US Privacy Shield framework and raised fundamental questions about whether European data stored by American companies could truly be protected from US government surveillance.
