Digital Sovereignty in Europe

For years, digital sovereignty in Europe was treated as a political ambition or a regulatory talking point. Today, it has become something far more concrete: a strategic decision discussed at executive and board level.

Recent developments across Europe—particularly in France—show a clear and pragmatic shift. Organizations are no longer asking whether digital sovereignty matters, but how and where to rebalance their dependencies without compromising operational efficiency.

The Trigger: Cost, Control, and Concentration Risk

Many European organizations began their cloud journey with global hyperscalers for good reasons: speed, scale, and innovation. However, three converging factors are now forcing a reassessment:

Recurring price increases without proportional functional value, jurisdictional exposure (CLOUD Act, Schrems II, extraterritorial risks), and systemic concentration risk arising from over-dependence on a small number of US providers.

This is not about rejecting innovation. It is about regaining optionality.

What Has Changed: Sovereign Alternatives Are Now Enterprise-Ready

A decade ago, European alternatives struggled to compete on usability and scale. That is no longer the case. Across collaboration, messaging, document management, and digital workplace platforms, European and national providers now offer mature, operational solutions that integrate well into regulated environments.

In France, organizations are increasingly deploying sovereign platforms such as Jamespot, LumApps, Wimi, BlueMind, and Jalios—often in hybrid or phased models rather than abrupt migrations.

The lesson is clear: Digital sovereignty no longer requires compromise. It requires intent and governance.

Personal Choices Are Becoming Organizational Signals

Interestingly, many executives and digital leaders are first experimenting at an individual level—moving away from mainstream office suites or storage services toward privacy-centric and open-source alternatives hosted in Europe or Switzerland. These personal transitions, while modest in scale, often serve as proof points that challenge long-held assumptions about feasibility and user experience.

They also change the tone of internal conversations from "it's impossible" to "it's complex, but achievable."

The Reality Check: AI Remains the Hardest Dependency

Where Europe still lags is in advanced AI platforms and foundation models. Most organizations remain dependent on US-based tooling for AI development and experimentation. However, this is now openly acknowledged as a strategic gap, not a blind spot.

The discussion has shifted toward controlled usage, data minimization, clear governance boundaries, and future exit or substitution strategies. In other words, sovereignty does not mean isolation—it means informed dependency.

The Executive Perspective: This Is a Risk Management Topic

For CXOs, digital sovereignty is no longer an IT preference or a procurement debate. It intersects directly with regulatory compliance (NIS2, DORA, EU AI Act), business continuity and resilience, vendor lock-in risk, long-term cost predictability, and trust, reputation, and data protection.

Seen through this lens, sovereign cloud and collaboration choices become risk-balancing decisions, not ideological ones.

The Way Forward: Incremental, Governed, Strategic

European organizations that succeed in this transition share common traits: They adopt hybrid and phased approaches, they align technology choices with legal and risk frameworks, they invest early in change management and executive sponsorship, and they treat sovereignty as a portfolio strategy, not a single vendor switch.

The conclusion is increasingly evident across Europe: Digital sovereignty is no longer an aspiration. It is a competitive and governance advantage.

Final Thought for CXOs

The question is no longer "Can we move away from global hyperscalers?" The real question is: "Do we have a credible strategy to avoid being dependent on only one?"

That answer will define the resilience of European organizations in the decade ahead.