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While Brussels champions policy initiatives and American tech giants market their own ‘sovereign’ solutions, a handful of public authorities in Austria, Germany, and France, alongside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT.

These cases provide a potential blueprint for a continent grappling with its technological autonomy, while simultaneously revealing the deep-seated legal and commercial challenges that make true independence so difficult to achieve.

The core of the problem lies in a direct and irreconcilable legal conflict. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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Europe’s quest for digital sovereignty is hampered by a 90 per cent dependency on US cloud infrastructure, claims Cristina Caffarra, a competition expert and a driving force behind the Eurostack initiative.

While Brussels champions policy initiatives and American tech giants market their own ‘sovereign’ solutions, a handful of public authorities in Austria, Germany, and France, alongside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT.

Europe faces a critical dependency on US cloud infrastructure, with 90% of its digital infrastructure controlled by American companies, according to competition expert Cristina Caffarra[^1]. This vulnerability has spurred concrete action, with public institutions in Austria, Germany, France and the International Criminal Court moving away from US providers.

The core issue stems from the US CLOUD Act of 2018, which allows American authorities to access data held by US companies regardless of location, conflicting directly with EU privacy laws[^1]. This creates an "irreconcilable legal conflict" since any contract between European customers and US cloud providers is subordinate to US federal law.

Several key developments highlight this shift:

• Austria's Federal Ministry for Economy completed migration of 1,200 employees to European open-source platform Nextcloud[^1]
• The International Criminal Court is replacing Microsoft office software with OpenDesk after its chief prosecutor was locked out of Outlook[^1]
• Germany's Schleswig-Holstein state has moved 24,000 civil servants to open-source alternatives[^1]

However, challenges remain. The acquisition of Dutch cloud provider Solvinity by US-based Kyndryl demonstrates how European alternatives can be undermined through foreign acquisition[^1]. Critics also warn about "sovereignty washing," where US hyperscalers market 'sovereign cloud' solutions that don't resolve the fundamental legal conflicts[^1].

[^1]: The Register - Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord