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From Digital Despair to Digital Sovereignty: Europe’s Awakening
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For years I have argued that digital sovereignty is not a buzzword but a geopolitical imperative. Posts such as “Reclaiming Digital Sovereignty: Time for Real VOC-mentaliteit” explored how dependency on foreign tech undermines real autonomy and why European nations need to start building rather than merely complying.

This blog continues that thread by examining a development that could be a true inflection point: Switzerland’s decision to roll out sovereign alternatives to US-controlled collaboration platforms. At first glance this seems small, but in the wider context of European efforts toward technology autonomy, it may be the first domino to fall.

The Geography of Control
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Switzerland’s move is not an isolated curiosity. It aligns with the same concerns laid out in my earlier piece “Dutch Gov’s ‘Sovereign’ Cloud Fantasy: More Hot Air or Finally Growing a Spine?” which critiqued superficial compliance exercises that fail to confront underlying control issues.

If storing data inside the EU were all it took to be sovereign, then problems would have been solved long ago. But we have seen time and again that local data residency does not prevent legal and political access from abroad. Real sovereignty means owning the entire stack from jurisdiction down to infrastructure.

Switzerland’s Domino
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Switzerland is now replacing US-based collaboration platforms with a sovereign alternative, establishing domestic control over platforms many organisations rely on. This matters for more than just branding. It forces a continental debate not just about where data is stored but about who has authority, legal responsibility and ultimate control.

The key questions now are:

Can a smaller nation build cloud infrastructure that is both secure and competitive?
Can it offer user experience that rivals the Silicon Valley giants?
And how do we define “sovereign” in the first place?

These are not academic questions. They are about operational and geopolitical resilience.

A Case Study in Geopolitical Risk
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The recent acquisition of Dutch cloud services provider Solvinity by Kyndryl Netherlands has brought these issues home in stark terms. A provider seen as part of the Dutch sovereign cloud ecosystem is now under foreign ownership, raising immediate concerns about continuity, control and legal jurisdiction.

This echoes the arguments I made in “The Dutch Kill Switch: Kyndryl, Solvinity, and the Sovereignty Mirage”, where I dissected how a supposedly sovereign provider became a geopolitical single point of failure under foreign control.

And it is precisely this risk that policy frameworks too often miss. In “The Exit That Never Was: ISO27001, the Dutch Government, and the Solvinity Panic” I pointed out that compliance standards like ISO27001 require operational exit strategies that in practice were never meaningfully implemented, leaving critical services exposed when ownership structures shift.

The Real Meaning of Sovereignty
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When we talk about sovereign cloud, we must move beyond slogans. Mere compliance with standards or local storage requirements does not confer autonomy. True sovereignty requires:

Control over legal jurisdiction and governance
Operational independence from foreign corporate ownership
Exit strategies that are real, tested and executable
Platforms that can compete on user experience and integration without resorting to foreign infrastructures

This is the same theme behind my earlier critiques of the Dutch government’s approach: that paper sovereignty fades quickly when confronted with legal and geopolitical realities.

What Switzerland Might Teach Us
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Switzerland’s initiative is not a full solution, but it is a real experiment in moving from rhetorical sovereignty toward practical autonomy. It highlights a point I have made often on roethof.net: the era of passive acceptance is over.

European countries must decide whether they want sovereignty that exists only on paper or sovereignty that manifests in control over critical infrastructure.

Conclusion
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The dominoes of digital colonialism are starting to topple. Switzerland’s move illustrates that technological autonomy can begin with targeted strategic decisions. But whether this spreads and scales depends on political will, investment, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths about where control really lies.

The path forward is not easy. It requires learning from the failures and blind spots highlighted in posts like:

The question has shifted from why we should leave the hyperscalers to why we ever accepted their dominance in the first place. The answer to that question will shape Europe’s digital future.