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Short abstract:

The paper analyses to which extent the European cloud initiative Gaia-X advances digital sovereignty despite including dominant non-European hyperscalers. It looks at controversies this dependence causes – which lead to a distinct framework of technological regulation and governance structures.

Long abstract:

The Gaia-X initiative has been launched to bolster European digital sovereignty and to contest the dominance of non-European cloud providers with their massive market influence, whilst cloud infrastructures are core resources of our societies and economies. Despite this aim, the initiative paradoxically incorporates these very dominant hyperscalers, arguing that European companies alone could not upscale enough and compete against economic and technological dependence. The initiative speaks to European attempts to challenge Big Tech, but it is not an EU project nor a regulatory initiative. Gaia-X has a unique character combining political and non-political elements and actors and aiming at infrastructuring digital sovereignty in the cloud sector through infrastructural development and governance structures.

The main questions to be answered centre around the extent Gaia-X contributes to advancing digital sovereignty in Europe. The initiative’s evolution unveils intricacies to the current landscape of technological regulation, with controversies shaping a distinct framework. This framework hinges on the interplay between territory and nationality within a context of borderless infrastructures. Here, a specific kind of hybrid governance emerges, seeking to navigate the balance between technological openness and closure, borders and nationality in a borderless infrastructure, and bridging diverse political and business interests. The study of the development of Gaia-X provides insights in the opportunities and challenges to achieve digital sovereignty and independence in a world dominated by US-American hyperscalers. This translates more generally about current and future infrastructure governance in Europe.