Why Europe Needs Its Own AI Infrastructure
Introduction: The Illusion of Control in Cloud-Based AI
Across Europe, companies, governments, and research institutions increasingly depend on artificial intelligence systems running on foreign infrastructure. Whether a hospital uses a cloud-based diagnostic tool or a law firm leverages generative AI to analyze contracts, much of that computation happens on servers owned by hyperscalers, mostly based in the United States or China.
It feels like we’re in control: we log in, deploy, and scale with ease.
But in reality, the control is an illusion.
Europe’s data, algorithms, and digital assets often sit under foreign jurisdiction. The U.S. CLOUD Act and similar extraterritorial laws grant access rights that directly challenge GDPR principles. Even when data resides on European soil, it can still be exposed to requests from foreign governments. The same applies to AI models trained with non-EU platforms, intellectual property, weights, or usage data might all end up outside Europe’s legal reach.
The result: Europe has outsourced its digital core.
And in the age of AI, that dependency is more than technical, it’s geopolitical.
The Sovereignty Gap: How Europe Became Dependent
For two decades, convenience triumphed over strategy.
Public administrations and private enterprises embraced hyperscaler cloud services for their unmatched speed and scale. Yet this convenience came at a cost, not just in euros, but in autonomy.
A 2025 report by Cigref and Asterès revealed a staggering figure:
80% of Europe’s enterprise cloud and software spending, around €264 billion per year, goes to non-EU providers.
That money sustains roughly 1.9 million jobs outside Europe, according to the same study.
It’s a capital outflow that drains innovation potential, tax revenue, and bargaining power. Every euro spent abroad is one less invested in European skills, infrastructure, and startups.
This dependency extends far beyond cloud compute. The chips powering AI training clusters are mostly fabricated in Taiwan or the U.S. The foundational AI models are trained by OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google, all non-European. Even security standards and APIs are often dictated by vendors overseas.
Europe finds itself in a digital sovereignty deficit, a position where it cannot fully guarantee the confidentiality, availability, or independence of its digital assets.
Why Infrastructure Matters: Compute, Data, and Control
Digital power relies on three intertwined pillars:
- Compute: the ability to train and deploy models locally.
- Data: the control over where, how, and by whom it’s stored or processed.
- Control: the capacity to define and enforce rules over those assets.
Without control over these three, “European AI” risks being little more than a European interface on top of foreign infrastructure.
Strategic autonomy requires local capability, not isolation, but resilience.
Europe needs to ensure it can operate its digital systems independently if external access were disrupted. The same reasoning that once justified energy independence now applies to data and AI.
When the pandemic exposed global supply-chain vulnerabilities, governments realized that dependency equals fragility. The same lesson holds for digital infrastructure: Europe must build the ability to run, train, and deploy AI models within its own jurisdiction, on its own terms.
The True Cost of Dependence: The “Dependency Tax”
The phrase “tech sovereignty” sometimes triggers skepticism. Critics argue it will make European solutions slower or more expensive.
But the math tells a different story.
The status quo has a hidden cost, what some analysts now call the dependency tax.
Every year, billions leave the EU to pay cloud and software providers headquartered abroad. Beyond that, there are indirect costs:
- Lost jobs: Each billion euros exported for digital services represents thousands of potential European jobs that never materialize.
- Lost innovation: Startups struggle to compete when hyperscalers dominate the infrastructure layer.
- Lost leverage: Europe’s dependency weakens its negotiating position in international data and trade policy.
The supposed “efficiency” of global cloud oligopolies masks the reality that Europe pays rent on its own innovation.
Shifting even 15% of that market share back to European providers could create nearly half a million new tech jobs by 2035. That’s not protectionism, it’s strategic investment.
What a Sovereign AI Infrastructure Looks Like
Sovereignty is not about cutting ties with the world, it’s about being able to choose your dependencies.
A truly sovereign AI infrastructure rests on four core principles:
1. Local Compute
European organizations must have access to on-premise or regional compute resources powerful enough to train and serve modern AI models. This includes dedicated GPU clusters, AI appliances, and sovereign cloud providers operating under EU law.
2. Open Models and Transparent Governance
Instead of closed, opaque AI services, Europe can lead through transparency, using open-source models that can be inspected, audited, and fine-tuned locally. This ensures compliance and adaptability.
3. Federated Ecosystems
Initiatives like Gaia-X and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) are paving the way for a federated infrastructure, a network of interoperable nodes that allow data sharing across industries without losing sovereignty.
4. Compliance and Ethical Alignment
With the EU AI Act entering phased implementation in 2025, European organizations must ensure AI systems meet legal, ethical, and transparency requirements. Sovereign infrastructure makes compliance achievable by design, not through external audits or exceptions.
Together, these layers form a resilient and interoperable foundation for Europe’s digital future, one that balances openness with control.
Europe’s Competitive Advantage: Turning Regulation into Strength
While U.S. and Chinese models of digital expansion rely on scale and state power, Europe’s strength lies in trust, accountability, and ethics.
At first glance, the EU’s regulatory framework, GDPR, DSA, DMA, and the AI Act, might seem restrictive. Yet in reality, it defines a global benchmark for responsible innovation.
As AI becomes embedded in everything from healthcare to defense, global companies increasingly seek partners who can ensure legal certainty and data protection.
That’s Europe’s differentiator.
The EU is already investing heavily in its own infrastructure:
- The EuroHPC program funds some of the world’s fastest supercomputers, including JUPITER in Germany, Leonardo in Italy, and LUMI in Finland.
- The EU Chips Act supports semiconductor manufacturing to secure supply chains.
- The Digital Europe Programme and Horizon Europe funnel billions into AI, cloud, and cybersecurity.
Regulation, when coupled with infrastructure, becomes a competitive advantage. It positions Europe as the global hub for trustworthy AI. Systems that are transparent, auditable, and privacy-preserving by default.
Retaining Talent: Building Opportunities at Home
Sovereignty is not only about hardware and policy. It’s also about people.
Europe has world-class universities and research centers, yet many of its brightest minds migrate to the U.S. or Asia, seeking the resources and opportunities found elsewhere.
The result is a talent drain that weakens Europe’s innovation ecosystem.
Reversing this trend requires three concrete actions:
- Invest in world-class research infrastructure: Scientists should have access to high-performance computing and AI resources without leaving Europe.
- Foster startup ecosystems: Incentivize venture funding and public procurement for European-built solutions.
- Build career paths in sovereign tech: Create competitive salaries, training programs, and cross-border collaborations to make Europe the best place to work in AI.
As EU Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva noted during the inauguration of JUPITER:
“Europe’s most powerful computing resources are now locally controlled and available to our researchers, innovators, and industries.”
That’s not just a technical milestone, it’s a message to Europe’s talent: you can build the future here.
The Road Ahead: From Vision to Implementation
Europe’s sovereignty strategy now rests on a multi-layered approach:
- Policy: Clear frameworks like the AI Act and Data Governance Act set the legal foundation.
- Collaboration: Initiatives such as Gaia-X promote interoperability and trust among European providers.
- Investment: Programs like EuroHPC and Digital Europe finance infrastructure and research.
- Execution: Companies like Onyx translate these policies into practical, deployable solutions.
The challenge ahead is one of coordination and speed.
Europe must move beyond declarations and prototypes to deployable, operational systems, local data centers, federated AI platforms, and compliant edge solutions for SMEs.
This is where pragmatic engineering meets political will.
And it’s where Onyx operates.
Conclusion: Reclaiming Autonomy Through Local Capability
Europe stands at a crossroads.
One path continues today’s dependency: fast, convenient, but ultimately fragile.
The other requires investment, patience, and cooperation; but leads to autonomy, resilience, and long-term competitiveness.
Sovereign AI infrastructure isn’t just a technological project.
It’s an act of strategic self-determination.
By mastering our own compute, controlling our data, and aligning AI systems with European values, we ensure that the digital revolution serves the interests of European society, not just its consumers.
To remain free, competitive, and innovative, Europe must unequivocally master its own digital foundations.
📘 Read the Full White Paper
This article draws from our in-depth research publication:
Unlocking Europe’s Digital Future: Sovereignty, Geopolitics, and Economic Power
(Published by Onyx Consulting, 2025)
The white paper explores the geopolitical, economic, and technological dimensions of Europe’s digital sovereignty in full detail, including data, sources, and case studies.