PAC at the Google Cloud Digital Sovereignty Summit in Munich: Europe’s Moment of Decision

Last week, PAC attended the Google Cloud Digital Sovereignty Summit in Munich, where leaders from government, industry, and the technology sector came together to discuss one of Europe’s most urgent strategic questions: how to accelerate AI and cloud innovation while maintaining sovereignty, trust, and compliance.

The atmosphere throughout the summit reflected both urgency and optimism. Europe faces widening productivity and competitiveness gaps, yet the opportunities presented by AI and sovereign cloud architectures are bigger than ever. Google used the event to reaffirm its long-term commitment to Europe with new investments, research insights, and an expanding sovereign cloud portfolio.

A Strong Commitment to Europe

One of the major announcements was the opening of Google’s new Sovereign Cloud Hub in Munich. This space is designed to bring customers and partners together to co-create solutions that combine innovation with regulatory and security requirements. Google also detailed the next steps on its German infrastructure roadmap, including the new data center in Dietzenbach, the expansion of the Hanau site, and further office upgrades across key German cities.

These investments form part of Google’s €5.5 billion plan for Germany through the end of the decade, reflecting a clear ambition to help European organizations adopt AI responsibly and at scale.

Europe’s Competitiveness Gap

Food for thought was provided by the report ‘Digital Innovation with Control – Clearing the Cloud’, written by Implement Consulting Group together with Google Cloud. The study suggests that Europe may be at a turning point: productivity already lags behind global peers, and the continent may have only a few years left to establish the foundations necessary to capture the economic potential of AI.

These are the most pressing messages:

• Europe risks falling further behind if cloud and AI adoption do not accelerate.
• The estimated €1.2 trillion AI opportunity is critical for Europe’s long-term competitiveness.
• Realizing this potential requires approximately €400 billion in additional data center investment by 2030.
• “Sovereignty” should not be interpreted as isolation; Europe needs a model of smart sovereignty that aligns innovation with robust control.

These points framed many of the discussions that followed, especially among policymakers from Austria, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, who emphasized the need for clearer, more consistent guidance across regulatory domains.

Sovereignty as an Enabler

A recurring message throughout the summit was that sovereignty and innovation should not stand in opposition to each other. Google and its European partners showcased how tightly controlled cloud environments can support modern AI use cases without compromising security or compliance. Whether through air-gapped solutions, dedicated sovereign regions, or data boundary architectures, the message was consistent: sovereignty should become a design principle rather than a barrier.

The first three partners providing sovereign solutions already today are S3NS (with Thales), Clarance (with Proximus and LuxConnect) and Schwarz Group’s cloud subsidiary STACKIT (for Google Workspace) provided insights into how these architectures are already being deployed across Europe. Their experiences show that customers increasingly expect access to both advanced AI capabilities and full sovereignty controls within the same environment. Further European partners will follow.

Customer Experiences

Customer stories from organizations like CSSF Luxembourg, Universitätsklinikum Freiburg, Qonto, and Schwarz IT demonstrated how sovereign cloud adoption is progressing in practice. Many highlighted the need to innovate in regulated industries, the importance of retaining control over sensitive data, and the value of strong partnerships. Several speakers also pointed out that skills and organizational readiness remain some of the most significant barriers to cloud transformation in Europe.

Digital Resilience for Defense

The defense-focused session underscored how national security strategies are shifting toward digital resilience. Data, cloud, and software-defined capabilities are becoming central to military readiness, requiring deeper collaboration between defense organizations, technology providers, and governments.

PAC’s View

The summit made one thing very clear: sovereign cloud is no longer a niche topic but a mainstream expectation for European organizations.

This fully confirms PAC’s own recent research, including a survey among 550 decision makers in the EU on digital sovereignty. Driving innovation and developing new data-based business models without compromising digital sovereignty has been confirmed as an important aspect by 88%.

Given the highly attractive size of the EU market and omnipresent modernization needs not least in regulated sectors, the hyperscalers are investing a lot to overcome geopolitical challenges and to position themselves as Europe’s reliable partners. Approaches vary, as PAC’s blog post about AWS’ strategy shows, and only selected parts of organizations’ workloads will be migrated to sovereign cloud solutions, but demand is high. And with increasing clarity about available offerings, as well as about regulatory requirements, investments in sovereign solutions will drive overall market dynamics, with cloud-related growth rates exceeding 30% in the coming years. The Google event definitively helped to bring further clarity to this complex market environment.

Europe’s ability to succeed in AI and other innovative technologies will depend heavily on how effectively sovereignty, security, and innovation can be aligned.

The Google Cloud Digital Sovereignty Summit highlighted the importance of digital innovation for the European economy while ensuring sovereignty. At the same time, it became clear that sovereignty must not be equated with isolation, as this would undermine competitiveness. Accordingly, Google’s key message during the event was: the technology is available, and Google is ready to collaborate and find solutions that meet Europe’s sovereignty requirements.