I positively surprised that AWS apparently built a separate IAM for their European Sovereign Cloud:

https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/opening-the-aws-european-sovereign-cloud/

I can't tell if this whole thing will be good enough, but some key issues seem to be addressed here.

@buherator It's not sovereign when owned by a US entity. Everything they and Microsoft have done is just pig lipsticking since NSL/FISA still apply.

@troed I'm no lawyer, but my understanding is if the infra is legally owned by an EU legal entity they can (at least in theory) say FU to the mothership
(they can threaten to fire the leadership ofc, but can't send them to jail etc.). This can also be used by AWS as an argument not to screw their EU business ("we would comply, it's just those picky EU judges!").

But yeah, we've seen how complicit people can become when they get nasty looks (see DOGE)...

@buherator The problem with lawyers is that they never deal in absolutes though - right @neil ;)

My understanding, this is a good overview: https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/25/microsoft_admits_it_cannot_guarantee/, is that it's about in which jurisdiction the "top corporate control" lies. Amazon, headquartered in the US, can be forced to hand over what the subsidiary in France has (under penalty to the HQ). A company with the HQ in France and a subsidiary in the US cannot (only the subsidiary risks actual penalty).

Amazon, Google and Microsoft will do everything to try to save their European business of course - but they're still kissing the ring.