This is a public procurement with high symbolic value. The European Commission has formalized the award of a €180 million tender for cloud sovereignty services, to be shared among four exclusively European providers for a six-year term. The contract, launched in October 2025, marks a concrete milestone in Brussels’ strategy to free itself from dependence on non‑European tech giants.
Four Players and a Framework
The selected winners are the Luxembourgish Post Telecom, the German StackIT (a subsidiary of the Schwarz Group, owner of Lidl and Kaufland), the French Scaleway, the cloud data-center arm of the Iliad group, and the Belgian Proximus. These providers were chosen under the Commission’s Cloud Sovereignty Framework, a guideline that notably requires that non‑European entities may exercise only limited control over the technologies used or the services delivered.
But the consortia forming behind these headline players reveal as much about the industry balances at play as the names themselves. Post Telecom relies on two French partners: OVHcloud and Clever Cloud. Proximus, for its part, has assembled a large consortium including Mistral AI, Clarence, the defense group Thales, and S3NS, the data-center joint venture founded by Thales and Google Cloud.
A Political and Industrial Signal
“This tender supports the Commission’s broader efforts to strengthen its own sovereignty by consolidating strategic control over key technologies and infrastructures,” states the European executive.
For OVHcloud, the announcement carries particular significance. Its founder and CEO Octave Klaba welcomed the selection of the Post Telecom consortium, noting that this contract would serve around forty European Commission agencies and “prove that credible alternatives exist in Europe.”
Very happy to announce that our consortium Post Telecom / Deep / CleverCloud / OVHcloud has been chosen to provide the Cloud for the >40 agencies of the European Commission. Thank you for the trust! We’ll be there to demonstrate that credible alternatives exist… pic.twitter.com/47iXVfriXl
— Octave Klaba (@olesovhcom) April 17, 2026
After years of debates and statements of intent, Brussels is finally acting by directing a significant procurement toward local players capable of meeting strict data-control requirements. A precedent that, we hope, will set an example for the member states.
