The EU is set to unveil its long-awaited tech sovereignty plan on June 3, with the package expected to include the Cloud and AI Development Act and Chips Act 2.0, aimed at encouraging sovereign European cloud, AI and semiconductor capabilities.
It comes amid a push to strengthen European AI infrastructure and move away from Chinese and U.S. dominance. The Cloud and AI Development Act specifically targets tripling EU data center capacity within five to seven years, with a focus on AI giga-factories and hyperscale infrastructure.
Yet some industry members are warning that the bloc’s AI ambitions might be outpacing the physical capacity needed to support them.
Bridging Ambition and Infrastructure
Matt Salter, global head of data centers at IT infrastructure company Onnec, said the logistical hurdles to delivery are being underestimated.
“The challenge for European operators is that ambition doesn’t remove the practical barriers to delivery,” he told AI Business. “Planning, power availability, supply chain constraints, skills shortages, rising build costs and stricter compliance requirements are already slowing projects down.”
Salter argued that new builds alone won’t be enough to plug the gaps, with retrofitting required to meet demand.
“New capacity matters, but it doesn’t appear from nowhere,” he added. “Europe is beginning to struggle to deliver at the pace required, so retrofitting existing facilities has to be part of the answer if operators are going to support denser AI workloads without creating disruption later.”
Alexandra Thorer, chief growth officer at BCS Consultancy, similarly told AI Business that demand will be the primary constraint for the sovereignty package.
“Across Europe, organizations are navigating a combination of power constraints, planning complexity, supply chain pressures and a limited pool of specialist skills, all of which are increasingly shaping where and how infrastructure can be delivered,” she said. “Success will depend on greater alignment between policy, energy strategy and infrastructure planning.”
Countries that create clearer development pathways while balancing sustainability and local requirements are also likely to be better positioned to attract investment.
“The opportunity for Europe is substantial but realizing it will require delivery frameworks that are equally as ambitious as the AI strategies they are designed to support,” she added.
The U.K. Perspective
Mark Samson, solutions engineering director for Northern Europe, Middle East and Africa at AI platform vendor Cloudera, said for a country like the U.K., uncertainty about digital sovereignty is causing delays.
“Without a clear definition and legislative direction, many organizations are struggling to turn discussion into action,” he said. “That’ll bite when rules suddenly come in.”
Samson warned that many businesses have already rushed into cloud and AI deals without properly accounting for sovereignty requirements, only to find that the promised cost savings evaporate.
“While the EU is moving to define and enforce sovereignty requirements, British organizations are still operating with uncertainty,” he said. “At the same time, geopolitical tensions and the global AI race are forcing governments to draw harder lines around where customer and citizen data lives, where it goes and what it can be used for.”
Better insight into data — and how it’s regulated — will be the differentiating factor for organizations pulling ahead in building out AI capacity, Samson warned.
“Organizations need to understand where their data sits, where it moves, which regulatory frameworks govern it today and which may apply tomorrow,” he added.
Shifting Attitudes
While the success of the sovereignty plan remains to be seen, its development indicates changing government attitudes toward AI’s integration into the economy.
“Across Europe, there is growing recognition that AI capability and digital sovereignty are increasingly interconnected,” Thorer said. “Governments are moving beyond viewing digital infrastructure purely as a commercial investment and are beginning to treat it as a strategic asset that underpins economic resilience and long-term innovation.”
The question now is whether the architecture being put in place will actually unlock the capacity needed, or if the gap between aspiration and delivery will widen further.
