European Banks Shift to German and French Cloud Providers Amid Data Sovereignty Concerns

European banks are reducing reliance on US cloud providers like AWS and Microsoft due to data sovereignty concerns and regulatory compliance. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), effective January 2025, mandates banks to ensure robust IT infrastructures, impacting both banks and third-party providers. Geopolitical tensions and incidents, such as the CrowdStrike disruption in 2024 and recent data center interruptions in the UAE due to drone attacks, have highlighted risks. Many banks are migrating sensitive workloads to European cloud solutions, particularly from German and French providers, adopting multi-cloud strategies to enhance resilience against cyber threats.

Published Mar 28, 2026

European banks are increasingly moving away from US cloud providers like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure in response to data sovereignty concerns and stricter EU regulations. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), effective January 2025, requires banks to demonstrate IT infrastructure resilience.

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Geopolitical tensions have underscored risks of reliance on a few providers, as seen in disruptions like the 2024 CrowdStrike incident and recent data center outages in the UAE. Consequently, banks are shifting sensitive workloads to European cloud solutions from German (Hetzner, IONOS, T-Systems) and French (Scaleway, OVHcloud) providers, adopting multi-cloud architectures to mitigate risks and enhance operational resilience.