Regulation / Platforms / Strategy
DIGITALEUROPE urges EU to limit strict cloud sovereignty rules to sensitive public workloads
The industry group wants the Cloud and AI Development Act's mandatory requirements to cover areas such as defence and justice, not the whole public sector, under one EU-wide framework.
DIGITALEUROPE, the Brussels-based technology industry association, has set out its position on the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA). It argues that the strictest sovereignty requirements should apply only to clearly defined, highly sensitive public cloud and AI workloads, such as defence and justice. Applying them to the entire public sector would, it says, raise costs without improving security.
The group also calls for one consistent European framework instead of 27 national approaches, aligned with existing cybersecurity rules. Citing a Commission estimate of €2 million in implementation costs per digital service, it calculates that a company with 20 services would face €40 million in the first year, plus up to €500,000 a year for maintenance and audits.
DIGITALEUROPE further asks that the next EU long-term budget allocate 25% to digital and that 25% of public procurement be opened to SMEs and scale-ups.
Editor’s note: This article relies solely on a position statement from DIGITALEUROPE, an industry advocacy group.
Why it matters
How CADA scopes 'sensitive' workloads will determine which public-sector data and systems face mandatory sovereignty controls, and therefore which suppliers and hosting arrangements public bodies and their vendors must review. Organisations serving the public sector should map which workloads they host fall into categories like defence or justice and track whether the final text uses tiered requirements or a blanket scope. Divergent national implementation, which the group warns against, would complicate classification and audit work across Member States.
Status: Published. Industry position paper; CADA's legislative stage is not stated in the source
Sources
Found via Euractiv
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