AWS Switches On Independent European Sovereign Cloud, Sets Next Stops in Belgium, Netherlands and Portugal

Europe’s quest to keep data under its own jurisdiction echoes the 1970s push for ‘data havens’ after the 1968 US-UK Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty, and more recently the 2018 GAIA-X initiative: each arose when foreign legal reach collided with domestic political control. AWS’s ring-fenced cloud signals a structural swing—states demanding not just privacy rules (GDPR, 2016) but hard technical borders and local boards to enforce them, reminiscent of how 19th-century nations built national telegraph networks to escape British cable dominance. If the trend endures, the long arc of cloud computing may fragment into legally balkanised zones, challenging the century-old assumption that information networks naturally globalise. Whether this launch proves meaningful hinges on two unresolved tensions: US extraterritorial statutes like the 2018 CLOUD Act, and Europe’s ability to cultivate home-grown hyperscalers. In a 100-year view, the event is a marker in the slow re-imposition of sovereignty onto a borderless internet—perhaps as momentous as the 1914 nationalisation of radio airwaves, or merely an expensive carve-out if legal loopholes and security flaws (e.g., the 2025 CodeBreach scare) still give Washington or attackers a backdoor.