Amazon has announced the general availability of its AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a new, independent cloud infrastructure located entirely within the European Union. This milestone fulfills the technology giant’s commitment to supporting and complying with the digital sovereignty requirements established by the EU.
The company has committed an investment of 7.8 billion euros toward the development of the European Sovereign Cloud. In addition, it projects that this investment will contribute 17.2 billion euros to the European economy through 2040 and will generate approximately 2,800 full-time equivalent jobs per year in local businesses.
Unlike standard Amazon Web Services (AWS) “regions,” the European Sovereign Cloud is a completely independent infrastructure, both physically and logically, from the rest of the global AWS network. In this way, European customers will not be dependent on infrastructures controlled from the United States, ensuring that their data remain within the EU, protected by local laws and managed by European personnel, promoting privacy.
Regarding its physical location, the first AWS region of the European Sovereign Cloud has been established in Brandenburg, Germany. “The infrastructure features multiple Availability Zones with redundant network and power supply, designed to operate continuously even if connectivity with the rest of the world is interrupted,” explains Amazon.
In addition to being built within the EU, this independent cloud is also operated, controlled, and protected within this territory. To achieve this, it features an independent governance structure, a dedicated security operations center, and will operate under a matrix controlled in the EU, led by EU citizens and subject to the laws of this region.
Amazon has created this new, isolated “software matrix” to ensure that both customer data and metadata remain under European jurisdiction, preventing access to information from outside the EU. Thus, the cloud operates autonomously and is isolated from Amazon’s global network, providing the highest legal and technical security.
As Amazon explains: “AWS European Sovereign Cloud is the only fully-featured and independently operated sovereign cloud, supported by robust technical controls, sovereign assurances, and legal protections. Public sector entities and companies in highly regulated industries require a cloud infrastructure that provides enhanced sovereignty controls while maintaining the innovation, security, and reliability they expect from modern cloud services. These organizations need the assurance that their data and operations remain under European jurisdiction, with clear governance structures and operational autonomy within the European Union (EU).”
Furthermore, this infrastructure is managed by legal entities established under German law and its governance lies with European leaders residing in the EU: Stéphane Israël, appointed as General Manager in October 2025 to oversee technology and services, and Stefan Hoechbauer, named in January 2026 as Joint General Manager. Both lead operations and digital sovereignty strategy, ensuring strict management of the cloud under European direction and regulation.
Amazon has explained that in this initial deployment phase, it has activated the core services “necessary to support critical workloads and applications” in the AWS European Sovereign Cloud offering, with the intention of expanding it further based on the demand from its customers and partners soon.
Some of the services already available include: Amazon SageMaker, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), AWS Lambda, Amazon Aurora, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), among others. You may consult the complete list at this link.
The goal of AWS’s European Sovereign Cloud is to comply with European regulatory requirements regarding data residency, operational control, and governance independence. To advance this mission and improve the service, Amazon intends to extend its coverage with new sovereign Local Zones in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
Additionally, it will further expand the infrastructure of the European Sovereign Cloud with Dedicated AWS Local Zones, AWS AI Factories, or AWS Outposts.
Photo: generated with Nano Banana Pro (Gemini)
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *
Δ