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A joint draft report on the European Commission’s proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) was presented at the European Parliament on Wednesday, calling for common EU rules on cloud and AI infrastructure, greater support for European technology companies and reduced dependence on foreign providers.
The proposal aims to strengthen Europe’s digital infrastructure and international competitiveness amid concerns that reliance on foreign technology providers could undermine the bloc’s control over critical services.
“This is not only a matter of economic competitiveness, it is also a matter of our capacity to make our own decisions,” Spanish conservative MEP Diego Solier said during a press conference on Wednesday.
“Technological sovereignty does not consist in closing Europe to the rest of the world, it consists of ensuring that Europe has the capacity to act, compete and choose.”
The proposal comes as the EU is making significant efforts to reduce its reliance on other countries for critical services, infrastructure, materials and security, with a slew of proposals currently in the works.
European leaders have been worried since Donald Trump returned to office, making the US an unreliable partner and exposing how reliant the bloc is American goods and services, especially big tech.
In June this year, Trump ordered Anthropic to block access to its widely used Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 AI models from outside the US, citing security concerns.
Access was restored later that month but conversations over so-called “kill switches” that the US government and tech companies held over critical European civilian and military infrastructure only intensified.
Boosting Europe’s digital independence
The draft report calls for greater investment in European cloud and AI infrastructure, including measures to help European technology companies grow.
It also seeks to establish common EU standards for cloud services and strengthen protections for critical sectors, including healthcare, energy and transport.
“Our critical systems run on someone else’s technology, and someone else can switch it off. Today a court, tomorrow a ministry, a hospital, a grid operator?,” Dutch green MEP Reinier Van Lanschot warned.
The lawmakers also want public authorities to buy more cloud services from European providers to help them compete with foreign companies.
“Europe has brilliant businesses and they are not asking for subsidies, they are asking for customers. That’s at the heart of our proposal,” Van Lanschot said.
The report also calls for faster approval procedures for new data centres, while ensuring that projects respect environmental requirements and benefit local communities.
Under the Commission’s proposal, the EU aims to triple its data centre capacity over the next five to seven years.
The proposed legislation comes amid concerns over Europe’s dependence on non-EU technology companies.
According to the Commission, three non-European hyperscale cloud providers control more than 70% of the European cloud market, raising concerns about data sovereignty, security and operational autonomy.
What happens next?
The draft report is expected to be published on Thursday and discussed by European parliamentary committees on 1 December.
A committee vote is provisionally scheduled for mid-March 2027, followed by a plenary vote in April next year.