In just a few years, the cloud has become the invisible backbone of European companies’ digital transformation. Business applications, critical data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity: everything now relies on infrastructures and services largely operated by global players. In this context, the notion of a sovereign cloud has emerged as an unavoidable buzzword. Sometimes touted as a guarantee, sometimes reduced to a simple marketing argument, the concept nonetheless deserves to be clarified.
In 2026, where does Europe really stand? Does it have credible solutions? And above all, what trade-offs must companies accept to reconcile innovation, performance, and control over their data? Grégory Gruber, Deputy Director Solutions & Innovation at Proximus NXT Luxembourg, provides some answers
Behind the term, a multifaceted reality
Digital sovereignty is not limited to the location of a data center. Hosting data in Europe, or even within one’s own country, is no longer enough. Sovereignty must be assessed across the entire value chain: infrastructure, software, data, governance, and legal dependencies. Three structuring dimensions emerge:
- Data sovereignty: Where is the data stored? Who can access it? Under which jurisdiction? With what encryption mechanisms?
- Software sovereignty: Who owns the licenses, the technological building blocks, and the updates? Is it possible to migrate or adapt tools without excessive dependency?
- Operational sovereignty: Can the company truly manage, audit, and govern its environments, or does it remain dependent on its provider?
This perspective makes it possible to move beyond a simplistic view of sovereign cloud as merely a “local cloud” and to approach the topic in a more strategic way.
GDPR ≠ sovereignty
In Europe, the GDPR is often seen as a sufficient foundation. It is indeed a robust framework for the protection of personal data, but it does not, on its own, guarantee digital sovereignty.
A company can be fully GDPR-compliant while still relying on infrastructures or software vendors subject to extraterritorial legislation. Sovereignty implies a higher level of control: autonomous management of encryption keys, environment isolation, control over data flows, and the reduction of critical dependencies.
In 2026, this distinction is better understood by mature organizations, but confusion still largely persists in public and commercial discourse.
AI reshaping the sovereignty landscape
The rise of generative artificial intelligence has profoundly expanded the scope of the debate. Sovereignty is no longer limited to storage or computing power, but now encompasses the entire algorithmic value chain. AI models, often proprietary and developed outside Europe, the datasets used for training, and the development frameworks and platforms dominated by a handful of global players.
In response, European alternatives are emerging: open or semi-open models, industrial initiatives, and public–private partnerships. Players such as Mistral AI illustrate this desire to regain a degree of control. But these choices come with trade-offs: younger ecosystems and functionalities that may, at least temporarily, lag behind the major “frontier models” coming from the US, yet remain fully integrable into a company’s IT environment, in a fully sovereign manner.
Applied to AI, sovereignty is therefore not an absolute, but a balance to be built.
Europe in 2026: between ambition and pragmatism
Contrary to some common misconceptions, Europe is not starting from scratch. By 2026, the offering has become more structured:
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European or “trusted” cloud providers have consolidated,
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hybrid and multicloud models have become the norm,
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sector-specific initiatives (finance, defense, public services) have raised the level of requirements.
That said, no single model has emerged as dominant. Hyperscalers remain essential because of their scale and capacity for innovation. Sovereign solutions, for their part, offer greater control, sometimes at the cost of trade-offs in deployment speed or access to certain advanced services. The choice is therefore no longer binary, but contextual.
A strategic choice, not just a technical one
Digital sovereignty cannot be decreed, it must be built. It depends on an organization’s level of maturity, its industry, the criticality of its data, and its long-term objectives.
For some companies, accepting a degree of dependency remains a deliberate choice. For others, particularly in sensitive sectors, control over the value chain becomes a strategic lever, on par with cybersecurity or resilience.
In 2026, the real question is no longer whether a sovereign cloud is needed, but how far to go in terms of sovereignty and at what cost.
Accelerating without naivety
The European sovereign cloud is neither a myth nor a miracle solution. It is a framework for reflection that encourages companies to question their dependencies, clarify their priorities, and make informed choices.
Accelerate, yes, but without losing one’s way. It is within this tension between innovation, performance, and control that European digital sovereignty is being shaped today, far from slogans and close to operational realities.
