Amazon cloud outage fuels call for Europe to limit reliance on US tech

illuminem summarises for you the essential news of the day. Read the full piece on POLITICO or enjoy below:

🗞️ Driving the news: A widespread outage of Amazon Web Services (AWS) on Monday disrupted digital services across Europe, reigniting calls for the EU to reduce its dependency on U.S. tech providers
• Platforms such as Slack, Signal, Perplexity, and Snapchat experienced disruptions linked to AWS servers in the US-EAST-1 region, particularly Virginia
• The incident comes just days ahead of a planned EU summit where digital sovereignty will be a key agenda item

🔭 The context: The AWS disruption underscores the vulnerability of Europe’s digital infrastructure, much of which relies on U.S.-based hyperscale cloud providers
• While AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud dominate the European cloud market, the EU has been seeking to assert more control over its digital future through projects like GAIA-X and discussions on “Eurostack” strategies
• Monday’s outage has intensified scrutiny of the continent’s overreliance on external infrastructure, even for critical services

🌍 Why it matters for the planet: Cloud infrastructure underpins critical services in energy management, transportation, communications, and emergency response — sectors essential for achieving sustainability goals
• Outages like this highlight the environmental and societal risks of centralised digital architectures
• A more diversified, regional cloud system would not only enhance resilience but also allow Europe to better enforce its climate, data privacy, and transparency standards

⏭️ What's next: EU leaders are expected to debate cloud policy, vendor diversification, and digital infrastructure autonomy during this week’s high-level summit
• Proposals may include incentives for local cloud development, regulatory guidelines on data localisation, and further investment in sovereign digital infrastructure
• Civil society groups and digital rights advocates are also pressing for stronger oversight and contingency planning

💬 One quote: "Europe’s dependency on monopoly cloud companies like Amazon is a security vulnerability and an economic threat we can’t ignore." – Cori Crider, Executive Director, Future of Technology Institute

📈 One stat: Amazon Web Services controls roughly 40% of Europe’s public cloud market, according to 2025 estimates by Synergy Research Group

See on illuminem's Data Hub™ the sustainability and resilience ratings of Amazon and its peers including Microsoft, Google, and Oracle

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