Europe's push to build more data centers may be solving the wrong problem. A detailed policy submission to the European Commission argues that the EU's new Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) focuses too heavily on expanding physical infrastructure when the real challenge is governance and reducing dependence on dominant US cloud providers.

What Is the EU's Cloud and AI Development Act?

The Cloud and AI Development Act is a cornerstone of the EU's Technology Sovereignty Package, set to be published on June 3, 2026. The legislation proposes to dramatically expand European data center capacity, develop homegrown cloud alternatives, and steer public sector procurement toward EU-based providers for sensitive operations. The underlying logic is straightforward: if Europe builds more infrastructure and reduces reliance on foreign providers, it will gain meaningful control over its digital future.

But according to ARTICLE 19, a digital rights organization, this framing misses the mark. In a submission to the European Commission, the organization challenged the core assumption that Europe lacks data center capacity. "Strategy without governance is just investment," the submission argues, "and in a highly concentrated market, ungoverned investment will predominantly benefit the incumbents it was meant to displace".

But

Does Europe Actually Need More Data Centers?

The evidence suggests Europe's infrastructure gap may be overstated. Research cited in ARTICLE 19's submission indicates that where genuine capacity shortages exist, they are not in server racks themselves. Instead, the real bottleneck sits in software and platform offerings where Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud have built deeply integrated ecosystems. Switching away from these platforms requires more than a technical decision; it demands complex institutional change across entire organizations.

What Europe genuinely lacks, according to the analysis, includes competitive software ecosystems, effective governance, adequate regulation of anti-competitive practices by the three dominant US hyperscalers, and the political-economic incentives to address those issues. Building more European server racks addresses the one area where Europe already competes effectively, while overlooking the proprietary platform dependencies where American hyperscalers are truly dominant.

What Are the Real Governance Risks?

Cloud concentration is already producing governance failures that the current Act does not adequately address. These include cascading outages that simultaneously silence media and public services, infrastructure providers that can unilaterally switch off digital services for European individuals and institutions with no accountability, and a gradual institutional drift away from democratic control.

Dr. Corinne Cath, Interim Director of Global Team Digital, emphasized the stakes: "Without strong human rights foundations, more data centre capacity simply provides more facilities for current incumbents to control and coerce European politics, while at the same reducing trust in European institutions, at a time of growing conflict and political polarisation".

Corinne Cath, Interim Director of Global Team Digital

"Without strong human rights foundations, more data centre capacity simply provides more facilities for current incumbents to control and coerce European politics, while at the same reducing trust in European institutions, at a time of growing conflict and political polarisation," stated Dr. Corinne Cath.

Dr. Corinne Cath, Interim Director of Global Team Digital

Popular resistance to data center expansion is already emerging across Europe. Residents, environmentalists, and local groups from rural Ireland to the outskirts of Amsterdam are pushing back against new facilities, citing energy consumption that strains local grids, water use in water-stressed regions, land occupation, and concerns about human rights violations. In some places, this resistance has slowed or stopped development entirely.

How Should Europe Reframe Its Cloud Strategy?

ARTICLE 19 urges the European Commission to reframe CADA around three interconnected challenges rather than pure infrastructure expansion:

• Artificial Scarcity and Market Concentration: Dominant cloud providers may engage in speculative capacity reservation and opaque pricing practices that create the appearance of scarcity where genuine shortage may not exist. Regulatory intervention here requires transparency and market reform, not more construction.
• Software Dependency and Lock-in: Organizations relying on proprietary managed services, identity systems, and databases from hyperscalers face switching costs so high that the concept of exit becomes theoretical. This lock-in is where hyperscaler dominance is most deeply entrenched and most consequential for institutional independence.
• Governance Failure: The Act currently treats governance and risks as an afterthought. But risks to freedom of expression, public interest media, and democratic accountability flowing from concentrated cloud dependency cannot be managed by infrastructure investment alone. They require explicit governance requirements, procurement reform, and mandatory impact assessments.

The submission makes seven concrete recommendations to the Commission, including strategically using existing regulatory tools to verify assumptions about capacity before committing public funds to expansion, and mandating infrastructure transparency by requiring cloud providers to publish detailed capacity utilization data.

Where Could Europe Actually Compete?

Europe has a comparative advantage that the current CADA framing fails to recognize. Competing with the United States or China on the volume of server racks is a race Europe cannot and should not try to win. However, competing on governance quality, rights protection, and democratic accountability is a race no one else is running.

The hyperscalers have optimized for scale and revenue. They have not optimized for the conditions under which free media functions, public institutions retain their independence, or those directly affected by data centers retain meaningful control over the infrastructure shaping their lives. That is precisely where Europe could lead, if it chooses to.

What Is Happening With European AI Research?

Beyond policy debates, European researchers are actively collaborating on responsible AI development. The UNINOVIS European University Alliance is hosting a Research Workshop on AI and Robotics on June 2-3, 2026, at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, bringing together approximately 20 to 30 researchers from across partner institutions.

The workshop focuses on the intersection between responsible AI and AI-enabled robotics, exploring how Europe can lead the development of trustworthy autonomous systems that reflect European values of inclusiveness, accountability, and societal benefit. Participants will exchange ideas across topics including AI and robotics applications in manufacturing, human-robot collaboration, autonomous navigation systems, smart sensor technologies, digital twins, AI and democracy, and the ethical implications of autonomous systems.

The event is expected to result in the formation of new thematic research clusters, draft concepts for future Horizon Europe projects, and a shared roadmap for continued cooperation beyond 2026.