Digital Sovereignty: Why Your Data Deserves to Stay in Europe

The Cloud Has an Address

When people talk about “the cloud”, they tend to picture an immaterial space floating somewhere above our heads. The reality is quite different. Your data is stored on physical servers, located in countries governed by very tangible legislation. And in most cases, those servers belong to three American companies: Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform.

For a Belgian or European SME, this dependency is not merely a technical concern. It is a legal, strategic, and increasingly a regulatory compliance issue.

The Problem: Laws That Cross Oceans

The US CLOUD Act

Adopted in 2018, the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act) allows US authorities to demand access to data stored by American companies, regardless of the physical location of the servers. This means that even if your data is hosted in an AWS datacenter in Frankfurt or an Azure datacenter in Amsterdam, it remains accessible to US government agencies through a simple judicial warrant.

This legal reality collides head-on with the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which in principle prohibits the transfer of personal data to countries that do not guarantee an adequate level of protection.

The Invalidation of the Privacy Shield

The Schrems II ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union (July 2020) invalidated the Privacy Shield, the mechanism that governed data transfers between the EU and the United States. Although a new framework — the Data Privacy Framework — was adopted in 2023, its legal robustness remains contested. Several organisations have already announced legal challenges, and many legal experts anticipate a “Schrems III”.

For businesses, this legal instability creates a permanent risk. Building your digital strategy on a framework that could be invalidated at any moment is not a reasonable bet.

The Concrete Risks for Your Business

1. Legal Risk

In the event of a non-compliant transfer of personal data to the United States, your company faces GDPR sanctions of up to 20 million euros or 4% of global annual turnover. The Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA) has intensified its audits since 2024.

2. Economic Espionage Risk

Your company’s data — contracts, business strategies, intellectual property, client data — passes through infrastructure controlled by companies subject to US jurisdiction. The risk of economic espionage is not theoretical: the PRISM programme revealed by Edward Snowden in 2013 demonstrated the scale of surveillance conducted by US intelligence agencies on digital data.

3. Strategic Dependency Risk

What would happen if, tomorrow, the United States imposed sanctions or access restrictions on certain cloud services? This scenario is no longer science fiction. In 2019, Google suspended Huawei’s Android licence overnight following a US government decision. No European company is immune from a similar decision.

4. Business Continuity Risk

Concentrating your critical services with a single non-European provider creates a single point of failure. Outages, pricing changes, unilateral modifications to terms of service: you are at the mercy of decisions made in Seattle or Redmond.

Digital Sovereignty: What Are We Talking About?

Digital sovereignty refers to the ability of a state, organisation, or individual to control its data, infrastructure, and technology choices. For a business, this translates into:

• Data localisation: your data is stored and processed within the European Union
• Applicable jurisdiction: your data is subject exclusively to European law
• Operational control: you control who accesses your data and under what conditions
• Reversibility: you can migrate your data and services to another provider without excessive dependency

Europe Is Building Credible Alternatives

The European cloud ecosystem has strengthened considerably in recent years. Credible alternatives exist in virtually every domain:

Need	Sovereign Alternative	Hosting
Cloud IaaS	OVHcloud, Hetzner, Scaleway, Infomaniak	EU
Email	Infomaniak Mail, Proton Mail, Tutanota	EU / Switzerland
Collaboration suite	Nextcloud, OnlyOffice, CryptPad	Self-hosted / EU
Video conferencing	Jitsi, BigBlueButton, Whereby	Self-hosted / EU
Storage	Nextcloud, pCloud, Tresorit	EU / Switzerland
CRM	Odoo, SuiteCRM	EU / Self-hosted
Analytics	Plausible, Matomo	EU / Self-hosted

These solutions are not gimmicks. They are used by public administrations, hospitals, universities, and businesses of all sizes across Europe.

The Economic Argument

Contrary to a common misconception, digital sovereignty is not necessarily more expensive. European providers often offer competitive pricing, with greater tariff transparency. The hidden costs of American hyperscalers — egress fees, storage surcharges, complex licensing — regularly inflate the final bill well beyond initial estimates.

Moreover, GDPR compliance has a cost. By choosing sovereign solutions from the outset, you avoid the expenses associated with impact assessments, standard contractual clauses, and reactive compliance efforts.

Taking Action: Where to Start?

The transition to digital sovereignty is a gradual process. Here is a pragmatic approach:

1. Map your data flows: identify where your critical data is stored and processed. Which services do you use? Where are the servers located? Which jurisdiction applies?

2. Assess the risks: classify your data by sensitivity level. Not all data requires the same level of protection.

3. Prioritise migrations: start with the most sensitive data — personal data, financial data, intellectual property.

4. Test the alternatives: most sovereign solutions offer free trials. Test them under real conditions before migrating.

5. Train your teams: changing tools requires support. Invest in training to ensure adoption.

Assess Your Dependency

Wondering what your level of dependency on non-European providers looks like? Our Sovereign Score tool analyses your situation and provides a personalised assessment with concrete recommendations.

Calculate your Sovereign Score | Let’s discuss your sovereignty strategy