European Commission awards digital sovereignty contracts, backs Google Cloud involvement

The European Commission has awarded a tender worth up to €180 million to procure sovereign cloud services for EU institutions, bodies, offices, and agencies over six years.

The tender was launched in October 2025 with the aim of strengthening the digital sovereignty of EU bodies and encouraging the market to offer sovereign solutions.

Requirements included strategic, legal, operational, and environmental considerations, along with supply chain transparency, technological openness, security, and compliance with EU laws.

Four providers and consortiums have been awarded contracts under the scheme, including:

• A Luxembourgish-French partnership led by Post Telecom, with partners CleverCloud and OVHcloud
• Germany's StackIT
• France's Scaleway
• A Belgian-French-Luxembourgish partnership, led by Proximus

The latter of these uses services from S3NS, a joint venture between Thales and Google Cloud. Clarence and French-based AI firm Mistral are also involved in the Proximus-led consortium.

"What’s interesting here is that technological sovereignty isn’t simply a theoretical concept: it translates into actual infrastructure and platforms with players able to operate together at a production level," commented Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud.

"This is also proof that European organizations can cooperate effectively and drive progress across the entire ecosystem.”

EC justifies Google Cloud involvement

The Commission justified the involvement of Google Cloud by saying that non-European technologies can meet the minimum level of sovereignty required by operating within a 'strict and appropriate' framework.

"While sovereignty was an important factor, the selected providers had to demonstrate that they can provide reliable, state-of-the-art technology and services, with a strong focus on fully managed services (PaaS), developer experience and automation," said the Commission.

"All awarded providers deliver a high level of technical quality for that scope, showing that EU providers are closing the gap. All awarded providers also achieve strong security ratings, demonstrating an excellent coverage in terms of security certifications."

High expectations

The providers were required to hit a Sovereignty Effectiveness Assurance Level (SEAL) of SEAL-2 - Data Sovereignty - requiring them to abide by EU laws and regulations without the need for additional technical measures by customers to protect their data.

Most of the awarded providers, in fact, reached SEAL-3 – Digital Resilience level – meaning that their service, technology or operations are immune from supply chain disruption from non-EU third parties.

"By successfully introducing sovereignty in its cloud procurement, the Commission leads by example in advancing Europe’s digital sovereignty, setting a benchmark for secure, compliant, and values-based cloud adoption across the public sector," the Commission said.

"The success of the tender highlights the high quality of European providers, demonstrating their ability to meet the Commission's strict criteria. It also shows that even non-European technologies, when operated within a strict and appropriate framework, can meet the minimum level of sovereignty required."

In future, the Commission plans to apply the sovereignty criteria it's developed to assess and enhance sovereignty across the digital services that it provides to its departments and other EU bodies.

It will also publish an updated version of the Sovereign Cloud Framework, based on what it's learned from this tender. process, which will be available to all.

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