For years, the phrase "tech sovereignty" has echoed through the corridors of Brussels and the executive boardrooms of Europe’s largest enterprises. Driven by a volatile geopolitical landscape, concerns over data privacy, and a growing fear of becoming a mere "digital colony" to American and Chinese hyperscalers, European leaders have positioned the pursuit of independent digital infrastructure as a strategic imperative.
However, a sobering new analysis from Forrester suggests that the dream of achieving true technological autonomy may be a bridge too far. According to the consultancy’s Global Sovereignty Forecast 2025–2030, the region’s attempts to untangle itself from foreign tech providers are not only falling flat but are arguably being driven by market hype rather than regulatory necessity.
The Reality Check: Stagnant Progress
The Forrester report introduces a "Tech Sovereignty Index," designed to quantify a nation’s capacity to independently develop, operate, and secure its critical technology stacks. The findings are, by any measure, damning for the European project.
Between 2025 and 2030, Europe is projected to make only marginal gains. Germany, often viewed as the industrial powerhouse of the continent, is expected to see its sovereignty score inch forward from 34% to a modest 36%. Similarly, the United Kingdom’s score is forecast to rise from 30% to just 32%.
These figures suggest that despite the aggressive political rhetoric surrounding digital independence, the underlying structural dependencies on foreign infrastructure—particularly from the United States—remain deeply entrenched.
Chronology of a Failed Decoupling
The modern push for European tech sovereignty did not emerge in a vacuum. It was the product of a series of intensifying pressures over the last 18 months:
- The Post-Pandemic Realization: As the world shifted toward cloud-native operations during the COVID-19 pandemic, the reliance on the "Big Three" (AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud) became absolute.
- Data Privacy Cracks: Persistent legal battles regarding the Privacy Shield and the transfer of EU citizen data to the US created a climate of uncertainty, forcing European organizations to rethink their reliance on non-European data centers.
- Geopolitical Friction: Rising tensions between Western powers and the East, coupled with the instability of transatlantic political relations, fueled a desire for "strategic autonomy."
- The 2024–2025 Policy Wave: The European Commission unveiled its "Technological Sovereignty Package," a legislative and investment framework aimed at boosting AI, semiconductors, and cloud resilience.
- The Current Impasse: As of 2025, while nations like France are attempting to pivot government systems toward Linux-based platforms, the vast majority of private-sector infrastructure remains locked into proprietary US-based ecosystems.
The Hype Machine vs. The Compliance Reality
Dario Maisto, principal analyst at Forrester and lead author of the report, argues that the current obsession with "sovereignty" is less about survival and more about marketing.
"There is a lot of hype around sovereignty, because service providers see it as the money maker," Maisto explained to ITPro. "Organizations are being told that sovereignty is the solution to their risk profile, but in reality, there is no formal, overarching obligation toward sovereignty in any legislation currently on the books."
Maisto’s assessment is particularly jarring for the IT industry. He notes that while there are specific requirements concerning data residency and the citizenship of personnel handling sensitive workloads, the industry has conflated these operational requirements with an ideological movement. "I was watching a Red Hat presentation where they claimed there were new regulations mandating sovereignty. There aren’t. There is no new regulation that mandates sovereignty in any way whatsoever."
This creates a dangerous feedback loop: service providers sell "sovereign cloud" solutions as a compliance panacea, while organizations purchase these services to satisfy a fear that is not grounded in actual law.
Deep-Rooted Dependencies: The "Hyperscaler" Trap
The primary obstacle to European sovereignty is not a lack of political will, but a lack of technical alternatives. The "Big Three"—Amazon, Microsoft, and Google—control an staggering 65% of the European cloud market. For many European enterprises, moving away from these providers is not a simple "lift and shift" exercise; it is an architectural impossibility.
"Certain SaaS applications do not even work outside of the hyperscalers’ clouds," Maisto points out. "You have two options as a client: you take a degraded, incomplete, and less-serviced on-prem version, or you get the most updated, fancy, shiny cloud version. But then you are forced to deploy on a hyperscaler because the APIs don’t work elsewhere."
The technical debt involved is astronomical. European firms have spent the better part of two decades embedding themselves into the ecosystems of Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow. Replacing these platforms is not a greenfield project; it is a high-risk, high-cost retrofit that most organizations are simply unwilling or unable to finance.
Economic and Strategic Vulnerabilities
The Forrester report also highlights macroeconomic factors that further complicate the landscape. Beyond cloud software, Europe suffers from a critical lack of domestic hardware manufacturing.
Currently, Europe accounts for less than 10% of global semiconductor manufacturing and only 1% of chip design. Without the domestic capacity to produce the silicon that powers modern AI and data centers, Europe is fundamentally reliant on a global supply chain dominated by the US and Asia.
"We need more options in terms of hardware manufacturing," Maisto notes, acknowledging that current EU efforts to stimulate the chip sector are a step in the right direction. However, the gap between where Europe is and where it needs to be to compete with companies like Nvidia or Qualcomm is measured in decades, not years.
The "Minimum Viable Sovereignty" Model
Given the impossibility of achieving total independence, Forrester suggests that organizations should pivot toward a "minimum viable sovereignty" model. This approach acknowledges that complete divestment from US technology is a fantasy. Instead, it focuses on three core pillars:
- Risk Mitigation: Identifying which specific workloads actually require sovereignty (e.g., national security or highly sensitive personal data) and isolating them, rather than attempting to move the entire enterprise.
- Compliance-Led Strategy: Focusing strictly on existing data residency laws rather than broad, ideological "sovereignty" goals.
- Managing Dependencies: Accepting that the reliance on foreign tech will persist, and focusing on building robust contingency plans, multi-cloud exit strategies, and vendor-agnostic architecture.
Implications for the Future
The implications of this reality are profound for European policy-makers. If the goal of "technological sovereignty" is to be achieved, the strategy must move away from reactionary protectionism and toward massive, sustained, long-term investment in domestic innovation.
As it stands, the European approach is often criticized for being too focused on regulation (e.g., the AI Act or GDPR) and not enough on the actual creation of market-leading technology. Without a home-grown ecosystem that can match the performance, scalability, and integration of American hyperscalers, European businesses will continue to choose efficiency and capability over sovereignty.
"So many people see sovereignty as a green field," Maisto concludes. "For organizations that have been investing millions, if not billions, in cloud migrations, it’s not about a green field. It’s a retrofit. And in a retrofit, you often have to keep the foundation you started with."
Conclusion
The path forward for Europe is likely not a complete break from the American digital ecosystem, but a more pragmatic, measured integration. As geopolitical tensions continue to rise, the region’s ability to "manage its dependencies" will be the true test of its resilience. While the political rhetoric may remain fiery, the technical reality dictates a more cautious approach—one where sovereignty is treated as a strategic tool for risk management rather than an absolute state of independence.
For now, the "sovereignty gap" remains one of the most significant challenges for the European economy, and the data suggests that for at least the next five years, the status quo will remain largely unchanged.
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