What is EU Data Sovereignty?
Reduce exposure to extraterritorial US law. Improve compliance with EU regulation. Migrate to European or self-hosted alternatives — assessed, designed, executed by a team with 30 years of German IT expertise.
Why this matters now
Three forces are pushing European organisations to reconsider their IT vendor stack:
- Extraterritorial US law applies to US-headquartered vendors regardless of where the data sits. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 compels US providers to hand over data — including data held by European subsidiaries.
- EU regulation has tightened. GDPR, NIS2, the EU Data Act, DORA, the Cyber Resilience Act, and the EU AI Act all add new obligations.
- Geopolitical exposure. Sanctions, tariffs, and shifting trade relationships have made vendor concentration on US hyperscalers a board-level concern.
What sovereign IT means in practice
Four layers, each with its own test:
- Data sovereignty: where does the data physically reside, and who has legal access to it?
- Operational sovereignty: who controls the operations, and under whose jurisdiction?
- Technical and software sovereignty: who controls the software stack?
- Supply-chain sovereignty: who supplies the hardware and components?