Gaia-X Welcomes the EU Cloud and AI Development Act and Calls for a Practical Trusted Path to European Digital Sovereignty

The proposed Cloud and AI Development Act from the European Commission is welcomed by Gaia-X as a significant step in enhancing Europe’s cloud and AI capabilities, competitiveness, resilience, and strategic autonomy.

The proposal’s Union-wide sovereignty framework, Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives, and public-sector procurement measures show that Europe is now moving from policy ambition to operational implementation.

Furthermore, the Commission’s proposal seeks to expand European cloud and AI infrastructure, support research and innovation, and introduce a common sovereignty framework for cloud and AI services. It does so by establishing Cloud and AI Leadership Initiatives, setting a goal to triple EU data-centre capacity within five to seven years, and creating a Union cloud computing sovereignty framework with four assurance levels. This direction is highly relevant for Gaia-X, whose mission is to build transparent, controllable, and interoperable digital ecosystems aligned with European values and capable of reducing dependency on third-country providers and non-EU control points.

Gaia-X’s position is that Europe now needs a practical trust and interoperability layer that can help translate policy ambition into deployable market reality across cloud, data, and AI ecosystems. The market context reinforces the importance of this debate. Statistics show that close to 65% of the global and European cloud market is controlled by three US hyperscalers and 70% of AI foundation models have been developed in the US since 2017, underscoring the strategic importance of Europe’s current cloud and AI policy push.

In our position paper, we bring proof that the Gaia-X Label scheme, launched in its operational form at the Gaia-X Summit 2025, provides a three-level sovereignty assurance framework for cloud services. Gaia-X also launched here the first catalogue of labelled cloud services in cooperation with CISPE, with the first providers achieving Gaia-X Label Level 3, the highest sovereignty level. CISPE has committed to deliver up to 3.000 European Cloud infrastructure services compliant with Gaia-X Trust Framework and Label specifications. Labels are verified against defined criteria covering trust, data sovereignty, transparency and compliance. The scheme is live, and cloud services are already being assessed and listed against it.

Gaia-X supports the objective behind the Cloud and AI Development Act. Europe needs stronger digital capabilities, more trusted infrastructure, and better conditions for sovereign innovation and adoption.

“Europe’s digital sovereignty will not be built by isolation, but by trusted interdependence. Openness and interoperability are what make sovereignty scalable, and AI sovereignty only works when cloud, data, and trust are designed together. The Cloud and AI Development Act gives Europe the policy direction; Gaia-X provides the practical framework to turn that ambition into operational reality”, stated Ulrich Ahle, CEO of Gaia-X.

The Gaia-X Trust Framework provides the baseline rules for participation in the Gaia-X ecosystem and supports machine-readable trust information through verifiable credentials and linked data. Gaia-X therefore supports a model of trusted interdependence in which organisations retain control while participating in open, federated ecosystems. In the Danube 2025 release, Gaia-X introduced Trust Framework 3.0 with domain and geographic extensions, enabling trust to be federated across different ecosystems and compliance regimes.

Europe’s AI ambitions depend not only on compute and data center capacity, but also on trusted access to data, clear usage rules, and interoperable governance across organisational boundaries. Gaia-X therefore sees the Cloud and AI Development Act as closely connected to the future of trusted data spaces and digital ecosystems, where cloud infrastructure, data governance, and AI innovation must work together.

The future of European AI will depend on Europe’s ability to create trusted, sovereign ecosystems in which organisations can collaborate, innovate and generate value while maintaining control over their data, services and digital assets.