AWS European Sovereign Cloud Launches in Germany
AWS European Sovereign Cloud signals a major regional capital commitment that reshapes Amazon's EU public-sector market and investor positioning.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Amazon committed €7.8 billion to build the EU-only AWS European Sovereign Cloud.
- The service is fully featured, independently operated, and keeps infrastructure, data, metadata, IAM, and billing inside the EU.
- Expansion plans include sovereign Local Zones in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal for public-sector and regulated buyers.
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Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced on Jan. 14, 2026, the AWS European Sovereign Cloud, a fully featured EU-only cloud region in Brandenburg, Germany, designed to keep data and operations inside the EU to meet regulatory data residency and sovereignty requirements.
Launch and Technical Controls
AWS said in a blog post that the Europe-specific sovereign cloud is now generally available, starting with a region in Brandenburg that includes multiple Availability Zones. The service is fully featured and independently operated, with all components— infrastructure, customer data, metadata, identity and access management, and billing—located within the EU. It maintains the full AWS service portfolio and exposes standard AWS APIs to ease customer migration, emphasizing low latency and in-country data residency. Customers must use a separate sovereign account and will be billed in euros through Amazon Web Services EMEA SARL.
Governance, Investment, and Expansion
Operations will be run by EU-based staff, transitioning over time to exclusive employment by EU citizens. The cloud is managed by dedicated European legal entities under German law and overseen by an advisory board of EU citizens, including two independent representatives, reflecting its design to meet EU data sovereignty expectations. Stéphane Israël was appointed managing director in October 2025, and Stefan Hoechbauer became co-managing director in January 2026.
Amazon has committed €7.8 billion to build the sovereign infrastructure, projecting it will contribute €17.2 billion to the EU economy by 2040 and support about 2,800 annual full-time equivalent jobs. Expansion plans include sovereign Local Zones in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal, with options for Dedicated Local Zones, AI Factories, and Outposts at customer sites. The service targets public-sector and regulated-industry buyers requiring isolation from non-EU infrastructure.
"Organizations across Europe face increasingly complex regulatory requirements around data residency, operational control, and governance independence," AWS said.
