Bottom line: The EU aims to build European cloud, chip, and AI capacities to reduce dependencies on the USA and China in critical technologies.
The EU Commission has announced a legislative package intended to make Europe less dependent on US cloud providers and Chinese semiconductors. The core focus is on technological sovereignty in critical infrastructures.
Background: Three US technology corporations currently dominate over 70 percent of the European cloud market. In chip manufacturing, Europe’s market share stands at approximately 10 percent. At the same time, European industry is dependent on imports — particularly Europe’s automotive industry sources chips from China. The Commission points to risks: sanctions or export controls could restrict the availability of technology offerings for European customers.
Planned measures: The package provides several approaches. For semiconductors, demand for European products is to increase. The public sector in Germany and other member states should increasingly rely on European cloud solutions for sensitive data rather than automatically storing data with US providers. Furthermore, the Commission plans to expand European AI centres and triple data centre capacity in Europe over the coming five to seven years.
Significance for CDOs: For Chief Data Officers, this has concrete implications for data storage and cloud governance. The requirement to favour European solutions will initially be binding in the public sector — but can serve as a model for private organisations. At the same time, regulatory expectations regarding data sovereignty are emerging, which are already laid out in the EU AI Act and the NIS2 Directive.
Process: Before the proposals take effect, EU member states and the European Parliament must approve them. Timely implementation is not guaranteed.
Source: www.it-daily.net · Published June 3, 2026
Lumi AI News — AI-assisted curation pursuant to Article 50 EU AI Act. Paraphrase and classification by Lumi News Pipeline v1.2.9.