The Commission has launched a €180 million sovereign cloud call for tenders, aiming to steer the market “towards compliance with EU standards and values”, a Commission spokesperson told Euractiv in an email on 21 October.
The tender, published a day earlier by the Commission’s IT department DG DIGIT, introduces a new “sovereignty score” formula to assess cloud providers’ compliance with EU rules. The score weighs multiple factors, including whether services are hosted within EU jurisdiction, exposed to foreign laws such as the US Cloud Act, or able to maintain operations in the event of foreign sanctions.
This initiative is intended to demonstrate the “sovereignty strengths” of European cloud service providers, the spokesperson said.
According to the Commission, the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act (CAIDA) — due next spring and expected to define “cloud sovereignty” – also aims to bolster Europe’s sovereign cloud capacity.
The spokesperson added that the tender “sets a new benchmark” for a practical definition of what a sovereign cloud should be.
However, the spokesperson did not clarify whether the tender’s sovereignty score formula would influence the formal definition of sovereign clouds in the forthcoming CAIDA proposal.
(aw)