On Monday 7 February, 12 EU Member States, including Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland, announced their intention to jointly develop an important project of common European interest (IPCEI) in cloud computing.
“This project, which will bring together European companies, laboratories and academics, will make it possible to create value and jobs throughout Europe, while supporting the emergence of French and European technological champions of the cloud”, said the French Secretary of State for the Digital Transition, Cédric O, on the sidelines of the Building Europe’s Digital Sovereignty Conference (see EUROPE 12885/6).
In concrete terms, these twelve Member States (which also include Spain, Hungary, Latvia, Luxembourg, Slovenia and the Czech Republic) have been working on this project with the European Commission for a year now.
A total of €7 billion, some of which will come from the private sector, is to be invested in new generations of cloud services.
Some 60 projects in sectors such as health, energy and automotive, involving around 180 companies, will be funded and will be used to work on the main pillars of the EU’s sustainable transition, economy, employment, environment and investment strategy.
“Our ambition is that this IPCEI on the cloud can be prenotified by spring 2022 at the latest, i.e. within a few weeks. This will allow us to finally have truly sovereign data storage”, added the French Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire. (Original version in French by Thomas Mangin)