Decade-long transformation
While the parliamentary vote signals political commitment to reducing technology dependencies, analysts warn that the shift will require sustained effort over many years. Enterprise response to these dependencies is already evident: 61% of Western European CIOs and IT leaders plan to increase reliance on local or regional cloud providers due to geopolitical factors, while 53% said these factors will restrict future use of global providers, according to a November 2025 Gartner survey of 241 technology leaders.
“The subject of sovereignty used to be dominated by data residency because the main driver was data protection,” said Nader Henein, VP analyst at Gartner. “Due to geopolitical tensions, the driver has shifted to reducing foreign digital dependency across the entire technology stack. European CIOs are now tasked with redesigning their approach to semiconductors, cloud, software, and AI, upending two decades of established strategy. It’s not going to be easy, it’s not going to be cheap, and it’s going to span multiple generations of CIOs.”
When asked whether European enterprises will see viable sovereign alternatives across core technology areas, Henein said: “The answer is yes, but the time horizon is potentially more than a decade. Europe has been supporting US technology providers through licensing agreements for the better part of the last two decades. Reversing that trend will not happen in one or two years.”
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