Europe pushes cloud sovereignty
Dozens of European cloud CEOs have jointly called for “real tech sovereignty,” pushing the EU to tighten data‑residency and operational controls and oppose hyperscalers’ “sovereignty washing” — a shift that forces architects to design region‑aware deployments. France meanwhile saw a concrete move with SAP launching a sovereign cloud on Bleu’s regulated infrastructure, signalling sovereign clouds are moving from policy to production. ( )
Twenty‑five European cloud CEOs — including heads from UpCloud, Aruba, Leaseweb, Nextcloud and Clever Cloud — signed a joint letter addressed to European Commission EVP Henna Virkkunen on March 17, 2026. (cispe.cloud) The letter lays out five concrete demands: sovereignty defined by control (ownership, governance and legal protections), guaranteed operational autonomy/resilience, reserved procurement with the principle “Buy European — or Ensure Resilience — or Explain,” stronger competition and interoperability rules, and targeted taxpayer investment into European cloud supply chains. (cispe.cloud) Signatories explicitly argue that cybersecurity certification alone “does not ensure sovereignty” and warned against “sovereignty‑washing” measures that would effectively entrench large non‑European hyperscalers through procurement or bundled AI+cloud offerings. (cispe.cloud) On March 19, 2026 SAP announced the commercial launch of “SAP Sovereign Cloud” in France, packaging SAP SaaS and critical‑workload support to be hosted and operated on Bleu’s cloud platform. (news.sap.com) Bleu is presented as an independent French cloud provider set up by Orange and Capgemini and is explicitly aiming for ANSSI SecNumCloud 3.2 qualification to host regulated and sensitive workloads inside France. (bleucloud.fr) SAP’s announcement names public administrations, Operators of Vital Importance (OIV), Operators of Essential Services (OSE) and workloads holding GDPR‑protected personal data (health, identity) or sovereign state data as primary targets for the new offering. (news.sap.com) Taken together, the CISPE CEOs’ demand set and SAP’s Bleu partnership convert policy positions into operational requirements that push architects toward region‑aware deployments, operational control planes (effective local control/access to data and workloads) and procurement‑driven vendor selection for regulated workloads. (cispe.cloud)
