Report 11 Aug 2026

Europe in Search of its Digital Sovereignty – Market View

Organisations from all sectors want to benefit from the innovative power of technologies like cloud computing, data analytics, and artificial intelligence, which provide an essential basis for future data-driven business models and advanced customer engagement.

However, the growing dependence on non‑European cloud/AI vendors, geopolitical instability, supply chain disruption, and regulatory pressure drive sovereignty concerns.

Digital sovereignty refers to the idea that states, companies, and public authorities should always

  • be able to shape their digital transformation in accordance with their own values and goals;
  • have control over the digital technologies they use and the data they process.

Organisations have to balance sovereignty, innovation, cost, and complexity; careful workload classification is central to pragmatic strategies.

In the public debate, digital sovereignty often focuses on data protection and data location, but sovereignty considerations should cover many other aspects.

Given the great variety of aspects to be considered, hybrid approaches prevail in most organisations, comprising

  • private clouds;
  • European/local providers;
  • hyperscalers offering sovereignty options (air‑gapped, local entities, partnerships);
  • open‑source strategies.

This report

  • examines why digital sovereignty matters to European organisations;
  • presents extracts from PAC’s CxO Survey on Digital Sovereignty (550 decision‑makers across several EU countries);
  • reviews IT buyers’ and sellers’ strategies as well as the first concrete engagements, including the European Commission’s Cloud Sovereignty Framework.

Recommended advisory: PAC Leadership Session – IT Resilience & Business Continuity