Study Puts Cost of EU Cloud Sovereignty Rules at €115 Billion

The EU's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act could cost Europe €115 billion from 2027 to 2036, The Next Web reports, citing a study by ECIPE. The research was funded by CCIA Europe, part of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, whose members include Amazon, Google and Meta.

The €115 billion figure is the study's central estimate. Its narrower scenario estimates €35.6 billion, while its broader scenario reaches €233 billion. The European Commission previously estimated an upper cost of €18 billion.

The proposal creates four sovereignty levels for cloud services purchased by public bodies. The lowest covers establishment and data location in the EU, while the highest levels restrict control by companies outside the bloc. The study estimates direct costs to public budgets at €33.3 billion, with software migration and rewriting accounting for about 69% of the central estimate and higher cloud prices accounting for about 30%.

The study attributes about €80 billion of the estimated cost to private companies in sectors including energy, banking, transport and healthcare. That calculation assumes the Commission applies similar assessments to one quarter of relevant private cloud spending. The study does not assign a value to potential security, resilience or strategic autonomy benefits and is not a full cost benefit assessment.