Overview
- German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron will host the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin on November 18 with roughly 900 participants.
- The meeting is billed as a push to define steps to unwind “critical dependencies” on non‑European providers, though no large‑scale European alternative or binding implementation plan has emerged.
- U.S. statutes such as the CLOUD Act and FISA 702 allow authorities to compel American cloud firms to hand over data stored abroad, with AWS already used for Bundespolizei bodycam recordings.
- Germany’s BSI president Claudia Plattner argues the response should be technical, emphasizing strong encryption and customer control of keys to make unauthorized access technically impossible.
- Lawmakers and business leaders call for sovereignty criteria, the state to act as an anchor customer, and new funding tools, as studies show nine in ten German firms use cloud services and many view U.S. dependence critically.