Amazon and Google Lobby Group Warns EU Cloud Sovereignty Law Could Cost €115B

A study commissioned by CCIA Europe — a lobbying group whose members include Amazon, Google, and Meta — estimates that the European Commission's proposed Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA) could cost Europe €115B over the next decade. That figure is more than six times the Commission's own upper estimate of €18B. Conducted by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), the research projects €33.3B in direct public-sector expenses and a potential €80B hit to private firms across banking, healthcare, energy, and transport. However, that €80B private-sector figure is a modeled scenario assuming Brussels uses Article 31 to extend sovereignty rules to 25% of essential private-sector cloud systems. The report attributes 69% of the projected expenses to code rewriting and software re-architecting required to migrate off US infrastructure. It estimates ten-year costs per worker would hit €1,711 in Luxembourg, €905 in Denmark, €900 in Austria, €864 in Finland, and €856 in Ireland. CCIA Europe is pushing EU governments to strip out rules based on corporate origin or staff nationality and restrict sovereignty mandates to sensitive public data. Meanwhile, Amazon and Google have been rolling out their own European sovereign cloud products to retain regional enterprise clients. "Member States cannot rely on the Commission's incomplete estimates when deciding CADA's strict sovereignty requirements for cloud and AI providers," — Mitchell Rutledge, CCIA Europe Policy Manager.