Why sovereignty?
Digital sovereignty has moved from political slogan to a concrete operational question. We map out the value that digital sovereignty creates.
Sovereignty is not about closing Europe off from the world. It is about being able to make your own choices: knowing where data sits, who can access it, which laws apply, and what it costs to change course. For most organisations, that control has quietly shifted to a handful of providers outside European jurisdiction.
Three kinds of dependency
Legal. US cloud providers are subject to laws such as the CLOUD Act, which lets US authorities compel disclosure of data — even when it is physically stored in the EU. The Schrems II ruling confirmed this is a real problem for transfers of personal data, leaving many organisations in a grey area they did not choose.
Technical. The more proprietary services a platform is built on, the more expensive and slow it becomes to move. Lock-in is rarely a single decision — it is the sum of a hundred small ones that each made sense at the time.
Economic. Pricing in a foreign currency, opaque egress fees and exit costs move negotiating power away from the customer. Once switching is expensive enough, there is effectively no market left.
What is at stake
Sovereignty is first of all resilience. A single vendor, jurisdiction or geopolitical decision should not be able to take critical operations offline.
Then there is compliance — GDPR, NIS2 and sector-specific requirements become markedly easier to meet when data and control plane stay inside the EU. And in the long run it is a question of European competitiveness: the value created on top of the infrastructure should be able to stay in Europe too.
Sovereignty in practice
It is not all or nothing. A pragmatic approach is about bringing the most important levers home first:
- Data, backups and control plane under EU jurisdiction.
- Open standards and portable architectures rather than proprietary locks.
- European providers and technologies where they are mature enough — for us, Scaleway is the starting point.
- A real exit plan that has been tested — not just written down.
The way forward
Most organisations do not need a big-bang migration. They need a clear picture of where the dependencies sit, what they cost, and which are worth acting on first.
That is the work we help with — independent of any vendor and aligned with your interests.
Map your dependencies
Book a no-obligation call. We review where your platform depends on non-European providers — and the fastest way to change it.