#10 EU Digital Sovereignty

In this episode, Toby and Krisztian dig into EU digital sovereignty: why it matters now more than ever, the legal landscape around the EU Data Act and the EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework, and the very real risk of European economies being dependent on US-controlled cloud infrastructure. They cover the contradictions between US and EU data law, the limitations of US hyperscalers setting up European entities, the current state of European cloud providers, the opportunity for EU tech to leapfrog incumbents, and what engineers can do right now to contribute to a more sovereign European digital stack.

Chapters

0:00 Introduction

0:49 The cloud landscape: why it's all American

2:35 The conflict between US Cloud Act and EU GDPR

5:09 How the EU has responded: the Data Act explained

9:31 What the EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework actually measures

21:02 Are US hyperscaler EU entities really sovereign?

27:01 The current state of European cloud providers

30:06 The leapfrog opportunity: skipping legacy infrastructure

33:03 The geopolitical shift: trust in the US has broken

40:30 Europe's quiet power and how it fights back

44:24 What this means for the tech industry

47:13 The financial sector dependency and existential risk

51:03 What does the transition actually look like?

53:00 What engineers can do right now

Technologies Mentioned

AWS - https://aws.amazon.com

Microsoft Azure - https://azure.microsoft.com

Google Cloud - https://cloud.google.com

#10 EU Digital Sovereignty

Show Notes