Connect Europe welcomes efforts to strengthen European cloud and AI leadership
Brussels, 3 June 2026 – Connect Europe welcomes the Commission’s objective of strengthening Europe’s digital infrastructure and technological sovereignty, while boosting trust in Europe’s digital ecosystem. While we will assess the specific proposals and provide our detailed feedback at a later stage, the overall direction appears to reflect the growing importance of cloud and AI infrastructure for Europe’s competitiveness and technological sovereignty.
Enhanced connectivity is the invisible infrastructure behind Europe’s ambition. Europe’s sovereign cloud ecosystem itself cannot flourish without robust, advanced and scalable connectivity, and sovereign telco technologies. This must not be taken for granted but treated as a strategic digital and technological asset to build the future, and not just a utility.
Europe’s cloud and AI ambitions will not be achieved through supply-side measures alone. Demand-side measures are essential to create viable business cases and unlock further investment. Public authorities have an important strategic role to play as lead customers. Public procurement, long-term contracts and guaranteed capacity commitments can provide the planning certainty needed to support investment in European cloud and edge-cloud infrastructure and strengthen Europe’s digital ecosystem over the long term.
Europe also needs the right conditions to deploy and scale digital infrastructure. Strengthening Europe’s sovereign cloud ecosystem will require accelerated investment, a more investment-friendly regulatory environment and improved conditions to deploy cloud and edge-cloud infrastructure across the Union. As computing demand continues to grow, investment in digital infrastructure must be matched by policies that facilitate access to the resources needed to operate it. In the context of recurring energy crises and growing computing demand, sustained access to affordable and sustainable energy will be critical to Europe’s ability to expand cloud and AI capacity at scale.
The lack of scale needed to invest in capital-intensive and decentralised infrastructure makes it harder to build the vision of sustainable EU technological sovereignty. Therefore, promoting efficient market structures, including by adjusting merger control rules, will be instrumental to ensuring that the EU telecom industry can invest across the wider cloud and AI value chain.
Connect Europe has consistently underlined the importance of a common framework for sovereign European cloud services, especially for sensitive use cases in the public sector. Any effort to clarify common EU requirements and strengthen trust in Europe’s digital ecosystem would be a welcome step. This should help strengthen Europe’s technological sovereignty while supporting innovation across the wider cloud and AI value chain.
Overall, Connect Europe supports an ambitious and pragmatic approach that helps accelerate Europe’s cloud and AI capacity, strengthens trust in the digital ecosystem and creates the right conditions for investment, deployment and scale. The key will be ensuring that the final proposal translates these objectives into clear and workable measures that strengthen Europe’s sovereignty, competitiveness and resilience in practice.