Margot Edelman – Global Tech Practice Lead, Edelman Camilo Lascano Tribin – Senior Director, Tech Advisory, Edelman
European businesses are questioning how much control they have over the technology they depend on. For American tech companies, that creates a growing test of credibility, with consequences for how they compete and earn trust.
“We want to be sure nobody has a kill switch.” That was European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen’s warning when Brussels unveiled its latest technology sovereignty proposals in June. It captured a concern increasingly relevant to European businesses: what happens if access to the American technology supporting critical operations is disrupted by decisions made outside Europe?
Europe relies heavily on US cloud infrastructure, and the Commission is turning concerns about that dependence into measurable requirements. Its Cloud Sovereignty Framework assesses providers against 48 criteria covering legal control, data, operations and supply chains. Although developed for public procurement, the Commission encourages private organisation to use the framework too. Its proposed Cloud and AI development Act would extend sovereignty assessments across public-sector cloud services, with higher requirements for more sensitive uses. Virkkunen has acknowledged that some of the highest levels would be difficult for American providers to reach because of US legal obligations.
For American technology companies, this presents a growing commercial and reputational challenge. They have spent years demonstrating what their technology can do. European customers increasingly want to understand what providers can guarantee when political circumstances change. The answers depend on how services are operated and the commitments companies are prepared to make. Those business decisions are shaping the credibility of corporate promises long before they are communicated.
Three areas show how these expectations are changing.
The first is the control European customers retain over their technology.
In April this year, a European consortium led by Belgian telecommunications company Proximus won one of four contracts together worth up to €180 million under the Commission’s sovereign cloud procurement programme. The consortium uses services from S3NS, a French company controlled by Thales that operates Google Cloud technology. American technology therefore qualified for the Commission’s own sovereign cloud requirements through a European operating structure.
The three providers built around European technology received a higher sovereignty rating. That distinction shows both the opportunity for American technology and the limits imposed by remaining dependencies. How a company structures its service affects the control it can offer customers and the strength of the claims it can make about that control.
The second is what happens when a provider’s commitments are tested.
Microsoft offers one useful example. In April 2025, Brad Smith announced that Microsoft would challenge any government order to suspend its European cloud operations through available legal avenues, including the courts. The company subsequently made that commitment legally binding in contracts with European national governments and the Commission.
Smith also explained what would happen if a legal challenge ultimately failed, including continuity arrangements with European partners and backup copies of Microsoft’s code held in Switzerland.
For the technology leader responsible for keeping essential services running, these details provide a basis for assessing what protections exist and what happens in an extreme scenario. For executives, they make the risks attached to a critical supplier easier to understand. The commitment does not eliminate every possible disruption, but it gives customers a clearer account of what Microsoft has undertaken to do and where the limits remain.
The third is the substance of a company’s presence in Europe.
The Commission’s sovereignty framework considers the extent to which investment, jobs and value creation remain within the EU and European Economic Area. Public trust creates a separate pressure towards meaningful local commitment.
Edelman’s 2026 Trust Barometer found that people trusted companies headquartered in their own country more than foreign-headquartered companies in every market examined for that comparison. In Germany, 63 percent trusted German-headquartered companies, compared with 34 percent for companies headquartered abroad. When asked how a company from a country they distrust could earn their trust locally, respondents globally most frequently identified long-term community investment and local hiring.
These findings point to the importance of substantive local relationships for multinational companies. The Barometer describes a “polynational” approach centred on long-term commitments to the communities in which companies operate. For American technology providers, that raises questions about how their European presence is reflected in the business itself, including where they invest and how much authority sits within their local operations.
As sovereignty becomes measurable, claims about European control are becoming easier to challenge. Procurement teams can assess them against published criteria, while journalists and competitors can examine the dependencies behind them. Companies that describe their services as sovereign without being clear about those dependencies risk accusations of sovereignty-washing.
This is where reputation and communications become part of the business decisions. The credibility of a company’s European commitments depends on the operating arrangement and protections behind them. Communications leaders can help organisations anticipate the expectations those decisions will need to meet, bringing an understanding of customer concerns and public trust into the discussion before commitments are made.
American technology companies have established what their products can deliver. Europe’s changing expectations mean they now need to demonstrate what they can guarantee when circumstances change. Their reputation will increasingly depend on how clearly they explain those guarantees and how well the underlying business decisions support them.
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