Three Dimensions of Sovereignty

The term sounds political, but it's very practical in everyday life. It comes down to three levels that together determine how independent an organization really is.

DATA

Data Sovereignty

Where is the data located, who may access it, and under which law?

OPERATIONS

Operational Sovereignty

Being able to operate, audit, and adapt it yourself, or switch providers.

TECHNOLOGY

Technology Sovereignty

Understanding and controlling the technology you use, instead of trusting a black box.

Only all three levels together add up to real independence.

What Sovereignty Delivers

Sovereignty isn't an end in itself, it delivers tangible benefits:

  • Control and traceability: you see what a system does and can prove it, instead of just having to take it on faith.
  • No lock-in: open standards and self-operable systems keep your negotiating position strong and costs predictable.
  • Data location and law: data held in the EU, processed under European law, avoids foreign access rights and unclear legal recourse.
  • Regulatory certainty: NIS2, DORA, and the GDPR demand demonstrable control, sovereign structures make that easier to prove.
  • Resilience: independence from individual providers or countries makes you resilient against outages and political shifts.

The European Framework

Sovereignty also has a political dimension. The EU Data Act entered into force on 11 January 2024 and has applied since 12 September 2025; among other things, it strengthens switching between cloud providers. Initiatives such as Gaia-X aim at a federated, European data infrastructure. Especially relevant in practice is the BSI C5 criteria catalogue (first published in 2016), against which cloud providers have themselves audited with over a hundred attestations.

Important

Sovereignty doesn't mean giving up on cloud or AI. It means: you retain the choice and the control, instead of tying yourself to a single black box.

The Kill-Switch Risk: When Foreign Governments Can Pull the Plug

Digital dependency isn't just a cost or competitiveness issue. It is a political risk: the government of a technology's home country can legally restrict or entirely withdraw access to it. For technical decision-makers, that means a critical component, a cloud service, or a license can, under unfavorable circumstances, become unavailable or unusable, without your own company having done anything wrong.

Foreign core technologyCloud, software, licenses, or chips from the US or China
→
Political decisionSanction, export control, listing
→
Access blockedUpdates, licenses, or services stop working
→
Unable to actOutage caused by someone else, not technically fixable

The kill-switch risk: an outage triggered politically, not technically.

Mechanism 1: US export controls. The Export Administration Regulations (EAR, 15 CFR Parts 730-774) of the US agency BIS govern which goods, software, and technologies may be exported or transferred to which countries and recipients. Through tools such as the Country Groups and the Commerce Country Chart, the US government ties shipments to certain destination countries to licensing requirements (Reasons for Control). The reach of the EAR explicitly includes re-exports as well, meaning onward shipments from abroad.

Practical consequence: even a German company can be affected if a product contains US-origin technology or a supply chain runs through US-controlled components. Updates, spare parts, or license keys can then become subject to licensing requirements or be blocked.

Mechanism 2: extraterritorial laws. The CLOUD Act, enacted by the US in March 2018, expedites access to electronic data held by US-based global providers. According to the DOJ, it is designed to create access to this evidence, regardless of where it is physically located. Data in a data center in Frankfurt is therefore potentially subject to US law, provided the operator is a US company or its subsidiary. For a sovereignty analysis, what matters is: legal control follows the provider, not the server location.

Mechanism 3: vendor and supply chain concentration. The market for cloud infrastructure is dominated by a handful of US hyperscalers, and semiconductors depend on globally distributed but heavily concentrated supply chains. The EU has officially acknowledged this risk:

  • With the European Chips Act (in force since 21 September 2023), the EU aims to strengthen its sovereignty and competitiveness in semiconductor technologies and reduce external dependencies. The Commission's reasoning: chips, also called semiconductors, are the building blocks of all electronic products, and the recent global chip shortage disrupted supply chains, caused product shortages, and in some cases brought factories to a standstill.
  • In cloud policy, the EU is pursuing secure, sustainable, and interoperable cloud infrastructures in Europe, and anchors this goal in the Digital Decade targets as part of its digital sovereignty ambition.

Why this is a sovereignty risk. The three mechanisms interlock. A political decision in Washington or Beijing, a sanctions resolution, or an entry on a control list can result in:

  • software updates and security patches failing to arrive, leaving systems vulnerable or non-functional,
  • licenses or cloud accounts being deactivated, paralyzing entire operations,
  • the supply of components stalling, halting production or maintenance.

The result is an inability to act, caused by someone else: an outage that is triggered not technically but politically, and that can't be fixed with the usual IT means.

Consequence for decision-makers. Treat the origin of critical technology as a risk parameter alongside availability and cost. It makes sense to take an inventory of dependencies (which services, licenses, and components come from where, and which jurisdiction they fall under), to prepare exit and fallback plans (exit strategies, alternative providers, portable architectures), and to evaluate European or open alternatives wherever the kill-switch risk would hit business-critical processes.

Why Security Products in Particular Need Sovereignty

For a security tool, the kill-switch and dependency risk weighs doubly heavy, for three reasons:

  • It sees everything. A security tool knows your vulnerabilities and touches your most sensitive systems. Its findings are, in effect, an attack plan against your infrastructure. If that knowledge sits with a provider subject to foreign law (such as the CLOUD Act), the map of your gaps is potentially accessible to third parties.
  • It must not fail when it matters most. If a security service is blocked for political reasons, you lose your defense exactly when geopolitical tensions, and with them the attack risk, are at their highest.
  • No tool demands more trust. A security tool requires deep access into your systems. That trust can only be honored if what it does is traceable (auditable, no black box) and where the data resides is clear.

That's why sovereignty in security products isn't optional, it's mandatory: EU hosting, full auditability, and no dependency that someone outside can cut off. What this means in concrete terms is explored further in Sovereignty in a Security Context.

Technological Sovereignty and the EU's Open Strategic Autonomy

Behind the term lies a dual objective: the EU wants to remain able to act and immune to coercion in critical technologies, while staying open to trade and international cooperation (open strategic autonomy instead of protectionism). The concept was developed by the Commission, among other places, in the 2021 Strategic Foresight Report, and has shaped digital policy ever since. The key levers at a glance:

  • European Chips Act (semiconductors). In force since 21 September 2023. Its stated goal is a key step toward technological sovereignty for the EU: strengthening the semiconductor ecosystem, supply chain resilience, and reducing external dependencies. The Digital Decade target is to double the EU's global market share in semiconductors to 20 percent. Three pillars of action: the Chips for Europe initiative (pilot lines, competence centers), security of supply and resilience (13 state-aid decisions for first-of-a-kind facilities so far, with over 32 billion euros in public and private investment), and monitoring and crisis response through the European Semiconductor Board. A Chips Act 2.0 was proposed in June 2026 to further reduce strategic dependencies.
  • Digital Decade 2030. The 2030 policy program creates a cooperation and monitoring mechanism between the Commission and member states, with annual progress reporting (State of the Digital Decade). Measurable targets across four fields: connectivity, digital skills, digital economy, and digital government. Multi-country projects let member states pool investments and launch large cross-border initiatives.
  • European cloud and GAIA-X. Anchored in two Decade targets for 2030: 75 percent of European enterprises should use cloud-edge technologies, and 10,000 climate-neutral, highly secure edge nodes should be built. The levers are an IPCEI (Important Project of Common European Interest) for federated, trustworthy cloud infrastructures, the open-source middleware Simpl for cloud-to-edge federations, and a planned EU Cloud Rulebook. GAIA-X (European Association for Data and Cloud, headquartered in Brussels) aims at a federated, secure data infrastructure. In June 2026, a proposal for a Cloud and AI Development Act was added, intended to at least triple the EU's data center capacity and strengthen digital sovereignty in the cloud sector.
  • EU Data Act. The regulation on harmonized rules for fair data access entered into force on 11 January 2024 and has applied since 12 September 2025. It gives users more control over data from connected devices. Central to the sovereignty question: new rules that let customers effectively switch between data processing service providers (cloud switching), to open up the EU cloud market and promote data interoperability. It also adds protection against unfair contract clauses and rules on public-sector data access.

The common thread: in the EU's understanding, sovereignty doesn't mean isolation, but control over critical dependencies, having your own capacity in key technologies, enforceable rules (switching rights, interoperability), and pooled investment. For technical decision-makers, the Data Act's switching rights and the emerging EU cloud policy are especially practically relevant, because they address lock-in and influence procurement criteria.

Avoiding Vendor Lock-in: How Open Source, Open Standards, and Self-Hosting Give Back Digital Sovereignty

What vendor lock-in actually means. Vendor lock-in arises when switching providers becomes so expensive, protracted, or technically risky that it is practically ruled out. Drivers are proprietary data formats, undocumented interfaces, lack of data portability, and contractual hurdles. The result: shrinking negotiating room, rising costs, and dependence on decisions the customer has no influence over.

Proprietary & hosted elsewhereTied to one provider, expensive exit, black box, foreign jurisdiction.
Switch?
↔
Open & self-hostablePortable, auditable, switchable, operations and data in your own hands.

Sovereignty means the ability to switch: open formats and self-hosting keep an exit realistic.

The EU Data Act explicitly addresses cloud switching. The regulation on harmonized rules for fair access to and use of data (Data Act) entered into force on 11 January 2024 and has applied since 12 September 2025. According to the European Commission, it lets consumers easily transfer data and switch between cloud providers, and it bans unfair contract clauses that could prevent data exchange.

There is a dedicated Chapter VI on switching between data processing services. Under it, providers of cloud and edge services must meet minimum requirements to ensure interoperability and enable switching. Chapter VIII adds interoperability requirements for data spaces; an EU repository is meant to set out the relevant standards and specifications for cloud interoperability. The EU is thus explicitly pursuing the goal of lowering switching hurdles and opening up the cloud market.

Why open source and open standards counteract this. The Open Source Business Alliance, by its own account Europe's largest open source association with over 270 member companies, describes open source software and open standards as essential foundations for digital sovereignty, innovation capacity, and security. Its reasoning: such software is transparently verifiable, can be operated independently, and can be shaped to your own needs.

This yields the central sovereignty levers:

  • Auditability: open source code can be inspected. Security vulnerabilities, data leaks, or hidden dependencies become traceable instead of a matter of trust.
  • Data portability and open formats: avoiding proprietary formats lets you take your data with you without conversion losses. That's the foundation of any serious exit strategy.
  • Interoperability: open standards and documented interfaces allow switching or combining multiple providers, instead of being tied to a single platform.
  • Self-hosting: when software is operated independently, operations, data storage, and further development stay in your own hands. The vendor loses the position of being able to dictate terms unilaterally.

Sovereignty means the ability to switch. The OSBA points to the holistic definition established in Germany by the IT Planning Council, which describes the ability to switch, the ability to shape, and influence over providers as the central prerequisites for digital sovereignty. Open source meets these requirements particularly well, precisely because the code can be inspected, operated, and adapted.

Takeaway for decision-makers. The Data Act and open source work hand in hand: regulation lowers switching hurdles from the outside, open and self-hostable software is what makes switching practical from the inside. A resilient exit strategy therefore needs both: open formats and interfaces as the technical basis, plus contractual and architectural provisions that keep a provider switch realistic. Anyone who thinks this through early retains negotiating power and control over their own digital infrastructure.

Sovereignty at Venedy

Venedy is built consistently European and traceable: AI processing through an EU provider (Mistral instead of OpenAI), operations on European infrastructure (STACKIT instead of AWS), and on open standards. Why no tool relies more heavily on sovereignty than one in security is covered in the next article.

Sources

Keep reading
SovereigntySovereignty in a Security Context ComplianceDORA, NIS2 & GDPR