European organizations must face the challenges of the modern world while preserving their sovereignty. Geopolitical instability, stringent legal expectations, and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) have led many organizations to place governance on par with resilience and business continuity in board-level risk discussions. The question they can no longer postpone is how they can leverage modern cloud opportunities without losing control over their data.
Defining Sovereignty through the CADA Law
The European Cloud and Artificial Intelligence Development Law (CADA) is a suitable means for this definition and allows Europe to provide a common and enforceable definition of "sovereignty." Without such a definition, the market is filled with commercial offers that claim sovereignty but do not deliver real content. This gap has led some organizations to look at open-source software as a solution to this problem. However, open-source software is a licensing model, not an operational model, and this raises questions about infrastructure, jurisdiction, and even reliability and accessibility. Defining sovereignty enables policymakers to assess sovereignty claims based on a consistent standard.
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Advancements in Collaborative Models
Europe should not wait for the implementation of CADA to take action. European Cloud Service Providers (CSPs) are collaborating with reputable technology providers to deliver real governance capabilities without having to rebuild all technology from scratch. If Europe wants to grow its industrial base, it must support the current ecosystem, not what may be created in the next 10 years. The CADA roadmap assumes that it will take approximately five to seven years for the capacity of EU data centers to triple. Providers who have already built capacity by combining EU capabilities with non-EU technologies must relinquish their growth during this period.
The partnership model significantly shortens the time and enables European cloud service providers to quickly deliver scalable governance services. In Italy, IPZS, which belongs to the Ministry of Economy and Finance of Italy, is using this model to build a modern digital applications platform for Italy's EUDI wallet, which is a fundamental initiative for the European Union's digital identity.
This model clearly demonstrates how scale can be used to provide governance capabilities and compete in the market. Hoping for a fully formed and accepted European technology infrastructure is akin to putting the cart before the horse.
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