A look at Europe's options and potential issues to get a “European Cloud”, which is likely to be more difficult to build than the €15B Galileo satellite system
berthub.eu/articles/pos... Rop Gonggrijp / @rop.gonggri.jp : I'm posting what I see so (maybe) I don't go nuts. — Meanwhile Bert Hubert (@berthub.eu) is doing the actual brainwork of getting Europe to a sane cloud policy and some hope of future autonomy. He's a talented teacher and many of the links are other great articles of his. — berthub.eu/articles/pos... … Mastodon: Andrew Gallagher / @andrewg@mastodon.ie : “Europe is full of technical talent, including the people who built much of the technology powering the major American cloud providers. The only issue? Much of that European talent is employed by American companies or working on open-source projects as a hobby in their attic. … AlexLunaView / @alexlunaview@mastodon.social : Another good article about the European cloud: — https://berthub.eu/... The discussion is the same, yes companies won't buy an untested product BUT we have to start somewhere. — Even Mastodon is a sort of cloud, sure different but at least the data you post here is not stored in USA. … Bastian Greshake Tzovaras / @gedankenstuecke … : I think @bert_hubert really nails it here about the rotten state of EC funding through Horizon Europe et al. — «The ones who do want to deal with [the bureaucracy] are slow-moving consortia, staffed with entire floors of people who love defining and checking “work packages” full of “milestones.” … Bert Hubert / @bert_hubert@fosstodon.org : Europe and European governments can no longer rely on American clouds. A European alternative won't emerge on its own. That's why it's time for industrial policy—but it won't be easy. — In this post, I explore the challenges and immodestly propose a coherent strategy to develop European alternatives: https://berthub.eu/... Forums: Hacker News : But how to get to that European cloud?
Context & Ripple Effects
The push for cloud autonomy follows years of concern that Europe’s platform and infrastructure dependence reflects weak homegrown service economics, a problem highlighted in Europe’s reliance on foreign communication platforms. Gaia-X also showed that a sovereignty project can be slowed by infighting and bureaucratic complexity.
This analysis frames cloud independence as an industrial-policy and execution challenge, not simply a procurement choice. That distinction matters as some EU organizations later considered moving workloads away from major US clouds over privacy concerns, creating a more immediate demand signal for alternatives.
First-order effects
- European governments and organizations seeking alternatives to US cloud providers face a harder build-versus-buy decision: a credible local option needs coherent policy, capital, technical capacity and usable services, rather than a standalone sovereignty label.
- European cloud initiatives may be constrained immediately by slow Horizon Europe-style funding and by the fact that much of the region’s technical talent is already employed by US firms or directed toward unpaid open-source work.
Second-order effects
- US hyperscalers retain an advantage while European alternatives mature, but privacy-driven customer interest can give local providers a clearer route to win sensitive or public-sector workloads, as reflected in EU organizations weighing cloud exits.
- Policymakers are pressured to simplify funding and coordinate industrial policy; otherwise, fragmented national or EU-led projects risk repeating the delivery problems associated with Gaia-X’s stalled sovereignty effort.
Third-order effects
- If Europe treats cloud as strategic infrastructure, competition could shift from nominal provider origin toward who controls data, operations and the supporting software ecosystem within European jurisdiction.
- The durable constraint is execution: sovereignty ambitions will remain dependent on foreign platforms unless Europe can convert its technical base into commercially sustained infrastructure and services.
The trend: European digital sovereignty is moving from a regulatory aspiration toward a test of whether coordinated industrial policy can produce deployable cloud infrastructure.