EU awards $212M sovereign cloud tender to 4 European providers

The European Commission awarded a sovereign cloud procurement contract worth up to €180 million (over $212 million) to four European providers on Friday, in a move aimed at strengthening the bloc's digital sovereignty and reducing dependence on non-European technology.

The framework will allow EU institutions, bodies, offices and agencies to procure sovereign cloud services over a period of up to six years, according to a European Commission statement on Friday.

The contract was awarded to Luxembourg's Post Telecom together with its partners OVHcloud and CleverCloud, Germany's StackIT, France's Scaleway, and a consortium led by Belgium's Proximus alongside S3NS, Clarence and Mistral.

The commission said that the selected providers were assessed under its Cloud Sovereignty Framework, which measures sovereignty across legal, operational, strategic, security, technological and supply-chain criteria.

It said the procurement is intended to reinforce its strategic control over key technologies and infrastructure while encouraging the wider use of Europe-based cloud services across public institutions. It added that awarding four contracts in parallel was designed to ensure diversification and resilience and to avoid over-reliance on a single provider.

According to the commission's framework, providers needed to meet at least SEAL-2, or Data Sovereignty level, to qualify. Most of the selected providers reached SEAL-3, or Digital Resilience level, which indicates stronger protection from non-EU supply-chain disruption, while the Proximus-led consortium reached SEAL-2.

Henna Virkkunen, the EU's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, said scaling the use of EU cloud services is key to strengthening Europe's digital sovereignty.

AA