The decision taken by the European Commission earlier this year to award a €180 million ($204m) cloud contract to four European-controlled providers represented one of the clearest signals yet that Europe is moving from talking about data sovereignty to procuring it in practice.
In an increasingly fragmented world, with geopolitics showing no signs of calming, it makes sense that governments are thinking carefully about where the data of their citizens and organisations sits and who handles it.
Extra-territorial legislation, which could, in theory, compel operators to share a country’s data with a foreign power, is rightly being scrutinized, and there’s now a growing consensus among governments that new infrastructure needs to fall firmly under European ownership and jurisdiction.
Structural headache
But the continent is facing a fundamental structural problem.
