European ambitions captured by American clouds: digital sovereignty through Gaia-X?

The Gaia-X initiative was launched to bolster European digital sovereignty. It aims to contest the dominance of non-European cloud providers since cloud infrastructures are core resources for societies and economies. Despite this aim, the initiative paradoxically incorporates these dominant cloud providers, prompting scrutiny. This article asks to what extent Gaia-X contributes to advancing digital sovereignty in Europe. Moreover, what are the challenges in pursuing this goal? The Gaia-X case provides insights in the opportunities and challenges in achieving digital sovereignty and independence in a world dominated by US technology companies. Taking non-regulatory forms of governance for digital sovereignty and the role of private actors in achieving digital sovereignty seriously, I argue that Gaia-X needs to be understood as a complex infrastructuring initiative. It has a unique character combining both political and non-political elements and actors. Moreover, the project aims at infrastructuring digital sovereignty in the cloud sector through infrastructural development and governance structures. The analysis along three dimensions of Gaia-X’s development – design, dependence, and differentiation – shows the confrontation with dominant infrastructure (providers) and how Gaia-X alters its approach by developing a specific hybrid governance. Despite this, Gaia-X aims to achieve digital sovereignty, albeit in a broad understanding and by focusing on ‘compliance by design’ as a means.