People walk past the Amazon Web Services (AWS) logo at an exhibitor booth at India Mobile Congress 2025 at Yashobhoomi convention and exhibition center in New Delhi, India, on October 8, 2025.
Anushree Fadnavis | Reuters
Amazon began offering its “Sovereign Cloud” product in Europe on Thursday. The move is aimed at keeping the company among the region’s leading companies even as stricter regulations for tech giants come into force.
The term sovereign cloud broadly refers to cloud computing services where data is stored, processed, and not moved outside a specific jurisdiction.
The European Union is requiring companies operating in the region to comply with a range of data and privacy regulations amid growing concerns about the dominance of US tech giants in the cloud sector and their potential access to European citizens’ data.
Based in Brandenburg, Germany and first announced in 2023, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) European Sovereign Cloud is a new concept. Amazon said in a press release Thursday that the cloud is “physically and logically separated” from other AWS regions. To achieve this, Amazon has created a new parent company for its sovereign cloud, which is locally managed within the European Union (EU) and operated by EU nationals.
Stefan Israel will lead the AWS European Sovereign Cloud. Stefan Hoechbauer, Vice President of AWS Global Sales for Germany and Central Europe, has been appointed Managing Director. AWS also announced five new members of its Sovereign Cloud advisory board, three of whom are Amazon employees.
AWS said Sovereign Cloud has “no significant dependencies on infrastructure outside the EU” and can continue operating even if communications with the rest of the world are disrupted. “Under extreme circumstances, AWS European Sovereign Cloud authorized AWS employees who are EU residents may have independent access to replicas of the source code necessary to maintain AWS European Sovereign Cloud services,” the company said.
In recent years, European politicians and regulators have become concerned about the control American tech companies have over critical technology infrastructure. According to Synergy Research Group, AWS, Microsoft and Google account for 70% of the region’s cloud computing market, even though the EU is driving business growth for regional companies.
While AWS promotes sovereign cloud, European regulators are currently investigating cloud computing services from Amazon and Microsoft under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to rein in the power of Big Tech.
Amazon announced in 2024 that it would invest €7.8 billion ($9.1 billion) in Germany’s AWS European Sovereign Cloud by 2040. On Thursday, Amazon announced that it is expanding its AWS European Sovereign Cloud to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
