From News Desk

The European Commission is strengthening the European Union’s digital sovereignty by awarding a tender that allows EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies (Union entities) to procure sovereign cloud services for up to €180 million over 6 years.

The four awarded providers are these European companies – Post Telecom with its partners CleverCloud and OVHcloud, STACKIT, Scaleway and finally Proximus, which partners with S3NS (a joint venture of Thales and Google Cloud), Clarence and Mistral.

This tender supports the Commission’s broader efforts to enhance its own sovereignty, reinforcing strategic control across key technologies and infrastructure.

The awarded providers were selected based on their alignment with the Commission’s  Cloud Sovereignty Framework, which measures sovereignty across eight objectives. These include strategic, legal, operational and environmental considerations, as well as supply chain transparency, technological openness, security, and compliance with EU laws. The Commission awarded four contracts in parallel to ensure diversification and resilience, avoiding over-reliance on a single provider. To be eligible, the providers had to reach rigorous assurance levels ensuring that non-EU third parties have limited control over the technologies the providers use, or services they provide.

Large-scale use of the EU Cloud is a prerequisite for improving the EU’s digital sovereignty. The European Commission wants to leads by example, as the Sovereign Cloud call for tenders sets a new benchmark for what ‘sovereign’ means in practice for cloud services. 

The tender encourages the entire sector to comply with European standards and values. Its success highlights the high quality of European providers, demonstrating their ability to meet the Commission’s strict criteria. It also shows that non-European technologies, when operated within a strict and appropriate framework, can meet the minimum level of sovereignty required.