This is especially true at a time when digital sovereignty has moved to the very center of the European debate. The question is no longer whether Europe needs digital sovereignty, but how it can be achieved in a concrete, pragmatic, and credible way. The challenge now is to move from principles to actual capabilities: controlled infrastructures, competitive European technology providers, native regulatory compliance, and sustainable economic models.
Diagnosis: European Cloud Sovereignty in a Fragmented Digital Landscape
The internet, once envisioned as a unified global commons, is increasingly polarized. We observe a clear divergence between an open, data-driven model, often characterized by its focus on attention capture, and increasingly closed, state-controlled models, as seen in countries like Russia and China. This fragmentation is underscored by reports of declining internet freedom globally, indicating a steady erosion of online rights and a more fractured digital sphere.
Geopolitics now profoundly influences technology policy. Export controls, data-localization rules, and platform restrictions have become common instruments of statecraft. For instance, the United States has tightened export controls on advanced computing and AI-related semiconductors, demonstrating the intricate link between technology and foreign policy.
Within this evolving landscape, cloud computing stands as a critical backbone for digital transformation. However, Europe faces a significant dependency challenge in this sector. European cloud providers currently hold only around 15% of their own regional cloud market, with the majority of growth captured by non-European hyperscalers. This imbalance highlights a broader threat to Europe’s digital sovereignty.
Layered on top of these trends is the accelerating AI industrial revolution. Projections indicate AI could add trillions to the global economy by 2030, with private investment in generative AI soaring. The rapid adoption of AI across organizations signals a paradigm shift, disrupting well-established parts of the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector and fundamentally reshaping business and society.
Pathways for Remediation: Rebuilding European Cloud Sovereignty
Europe’s response to these challenges is rooted in its core values, offering a pragmatic and hopeful path forward:
Privacy as a Competitive Edge: The GDPR Effect
To secure digital sovereignty, Europe must reinforce its domestic tech ecosystem. This requires a pragmatic and proportionate approach, facilitating easier access to public procurement for European innovators, increasing scale-up finance, and implementing targeted industrial policies for strategic technologies such as cloud, AI, and semiconductors.
The goal is not protectionism, but closing capability gaps so European firms can compete on value, reliability, security, and regulatory alignment—ensuring Europe remains a source of digital innovation rather than merely a consumer of others’ advancements.
Strengthening the Home Base: A Pragmatic, Proportionate Approach
To secure digital sovereignty, Europe must reinforce its domestic tech ecosystem. This requires a pragmatic and proportionate approach focused on opening doors for European SMEs and scale-ups, limiting structural barriers to market access, facilitating participation in public procurement, increasing scale-up finance, and implementing targeted industrial policies for strategic technologies such as cloud, AI, and semiconductors. The goal is not isolation, but to close capability gaps, enabling European firms to compete on value, reliability, security, and regulatory alignment. This will ensure Europe remains a source of digital innovation, rather than solely a consumer of others’ advancements.
Being the World’s Bridge: Connecting Ecosystems
Europe is uniquely positioned to connect diverse digital ecosystems rather than contribute to their fragmentation. Leveraging its network of economic relationships, Europe can align digital standards, security, and interoperability across continents. This approach aligns with the European Union’s Digital Partnerships with like-minded countries such as Japan, South Korea, Canada, and Singapore, which aim to foster trusted digital cooperation and shared standards globally.
Rebuilding European cloud sovereignty also requires relying on European cloud and PaaS providers that operate under EU jurisdiction and align infrastructure, governance, and compliance by design.
Building Cultural and Technological Bridges for Cloud Sovereignty
At Clever Cloud, a European cloud and PaaS provider, these principles translate into concrete choices: operating infrastructure under European jurisdiction, supporting open technologies, and designing cloud services aligned with GDPR and European regulatory frameworks.
This also highlights the need for a clear, credible, and widely recognized label defining what qualifies as a sovereign cloud solution in Europe. Today, multiple initiatives and certifications coexist, but none fully provides a shared, legitimate reference at the European level. Establishing such a framework is essential to bring clarity to users, guide public procurement, and strengthen trust in genuinely sovereignty-aligned cloud solutions.
In my role as VP International Growth at Clever Cloud, my responsibility is to make Europe’s digital leadership tangible on the ground. I work to translate this human-centric vision—championed by our CEO, Quentin Adam—into concrete practices that support local ecosystems and long-term digital autonomy.
There is another path to technological acculturation—one that prioritizes mutual understanding, long-term trust, and local empowerment over one-size-fits-all expansion models.
Local partnerships, acculturation, and shared value
When I enter a new market, I don’t arrive with a prefab playbook. I start by partnering with local providers, integrators, and universities; I listen, adapt to regulations and languages, and align with how business is actually done. This approach creates a two-way exchange of knowledge and trust, which is the only way cloud adoption becomes sustainable. My goal is to empower communities to advance their own strategic autonomy and data sovereignty—while staying connected to a global network.
Local Money—because sovereignty needs roots
I invest locally whenever I can: local data centers, local talent, and fair value-sharing. As I like to say, “Ain’t sovereignty if it ain’t your money.” Practically, that means helping customers and partners keep control of their data, costs, and roadmaps—without sacrificing global interoperability. If our presence doesn’t strengthen the local digital economy and create durable growth, we’re not doing it right.
Distributed R&D and talent development
I’m building a truly multi-national innovation network by establishing R&D capabilities where we operate. I focus on training the next generation of engineers locally and connecting them across borders. This doesn’t just create high-skilled jobs or reduce brain drain; it injects diverse ideas straight into our product roadmap, making our platform more robust and relevant worldwide. The synergy that emerges when talent from different cultures works on the same hard problems is one of the most powerful forces for progress I know.
This bridge-building mindset is pragmatic and hopeful. Today, I’m collaborating across Morocco, Nigeria, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, working with partners in Thailand, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and engaging with Canada, and Brazil. I’m not interested in picking sides; I’m interested in raising the floor for reliability, resilience, and sovereignty-friendly cloud everywhere we operate.
A Diplomatic, Builder’s Mindset for European Cloud Sovereignty
Europe’s path is neither laissez-faire nor lock-down. A human-centric approach must combine trustworthy rules, real industrial capability, and international cooperation.
That means making trust a feature—from GDPR today to accountable AI governance tomorrow. It means backing European builders—SMEs and scale-ups—through smarter procurement and financing. And it means bridging continents by aligning interoperable standards so innovation flows both ways.
If policymakers, businesses, and civil society embrace this approach together, Europe will not only navigate a polarized, AI-accelerated world—it will help shape it. That is the standard I set for my work: technology that improves lives, strengthens connections, and turns fragmentation into collaboration.