Exit without Migration: Cloud Switching and Operational Continuity in EU Law

Abstract EU law can make cloud exit legally enforceable while leaving migration operationally uncertain. This article asks why a customer with a binding right to leave a cloud provider may still lack a workable way to continue the service elsewhere. Reading the EU Data Act alongside the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), it shows how switching and operational continuity depend on conditions governed by different obligations and actors. The Data Act addresses provider-side switching obstacles but bounds the departing provider’s responsibility where reconstruction also depends on the customer, the destination environment and differentiated service functionality. In finance, DORA requires financial entities to prepare for continuity of critical or important functions. These limits on provider responsibility can be proportionate, even as migration remains operationally uncertain. The article argues that DORA’s existing requirements for feasible, tested and continuity-preserving exit plans should substantiate a credible path for reconstituting and continuing the regulated function after exit. More broadly, it shows how individually defensible regulatory duties can leave a shared operational outcome insufficiently substantiated when responsibility is distributed across instruments.