European biz calls for Euro tech for local people
- Reference: 1745407930
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/04/23/european_biz_open_letter/
- Source link:
In a post on [1]its home page , CEO André Rogaczewski called for "European solutions—built by European companies, run on European data, and accountable to European citizens."
Under Trump 2.0, Europe's dependence on US clouds back under the spotlight [2]READ MORE
"From social media to cloud infrastructure," he writes, "from applications to algorithms, we are dependent on technologies developed elsewhere, by actors who may not share our values.
"This places our security, sovereignty, and democracy at risk."
The words are familiar and calls for greater sovereignty, both in terms of data and digital, were repeatedly made over the years.
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However, recent events and rhetoric from the US administration have eroded trust in US-based hyperscalers. Just a swipe of the pen in the White House could force US tech giants to disclose all manner of data, some of which might have privacy or commercial implications.
[4]Europe's cloud customers eyeing exit from US hyperscalers
[5]Delicious irony as Euro alliance pumps €1M of Microsoft's money into open source cloud federation tech
[6]Euro techies call for sovereign fund to escape Uncle Sam's digital death grip
[7]Watchdog fails to stop big vendor lock-in, say UK cloud market's smaller players
In an [8]interview with The Register several days ago, Frank Karlitschek, CEO of German cloud-hosting crew Nextcloud, warned of fears of unreliability – not technical, but political – and the potential for espionage in the event access to customer data was given up.
Karlitschek also said the US administration's chaotic approach to the [9]application of tariffs and the [10]pricing [11]practices of the US tech giants were also feeding into a sense of unease.
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Netcompany's theme is "Stand Tall Europe," and we do not doubt the Danish publicly traded IT consultancy would be more than happy to sell European wares to customers regarding digital services. Plenty of projects are emerging across the continent designed to wean customers off US hyperscalers and to opt for European provided technology.
Euro techies call for sovereign fund to escape Uncle Sam's digital death grip [14]READ MORE
Fulcrum, a cloud federation project into which the Cloud Infrastructure Service Providers in Europe (CISPE) association [15]recently invested €1 million , is one such example. Mark Boost, CEO of UK cloud vendor Civo, told The Register , "In the EU these types of initiatives are springing up everywhere." He did, however, bemoan an apparent complacency in the UK.
EU regulators have issued [16]digital sovereignty decrees in the past, and US hyperscalers have started to jump through hoops to meet the rules. Microsoft's [17]EU data boundary is designed to let customers store and process data for its core cloud services within the EU and European Free Trade Association (EFTA) regions.
However, Microsoft is still a US company subject to US laws. While its EU data boundary might have seemed a great idea a few years ago, when it began work on the project, things are undeniably different now. Microsoft has met the letter of the law, but it now must deal with a feeling of unease and distrust in US companies caused by external factors.
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For European organizations, this means considering where new workloads and data should go and the potential business risk involved in selecting a tech giant that might be subject to the whims of an unpredictable US administration. Or choosing something closer to home, away from the Trump effect.
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[1] https://netcompany.com/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/26/europe_has_second_thoughts_about/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aAkOrR3ezlDjyunEIgjuvgAAAAk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/17/us_hyperscaler_alternatives/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/01/cispe_fulcrum_donation/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/17/european_tech_sovereign_fund/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/06/cma_overlooks_factors_hurting_small/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/17/us_hyperscaler_alternatives/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/23/us_china_tariff_reduction_plan/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/14/tech_tariff_update/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/10/q1_2025_pc_shipments_tariffs/
[12] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aAkOrR3ezlDjyunEIgjuvgAAAAk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aAkOrR3ezlDjyunEIgjuvgAAAAk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/17/european_tech_sovereign_fund/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/01/cispe_fulcrum_donation/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2022/02/17/france_eu_sovereignty/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/03/microsoft_unveils_a_finalized_eu/
[18] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offprem/paasiaas&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aAkOrR3ezlDjyunEIgjuvgAAAAk&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Taxes and housing
If you don't like income tax, what would you replace it with instead? Accumulated wealth is one idea but for some reason the average voter would vote against that, they believe Elon Musk is acting in their interests.
There are already EU green cards, but they are [1]blue .
[1] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies/migration-and-asylum/eu-immigration-portal/eu-blue-card_en
> Accumulated wealth is one idea
- another idea is income tax rate relative to accumulated wealth. The more you have, the higher rate of income tax.
Because wealth has power-law properties, as it tends to concentrate like a star-shaped network. Besides wealth is corruptive, so preventing accelerated accumulation makes total sense.
Such tax would also encourage spending. Great majority has mostly debt (not wealth). So why would they vote against it?
Re: Taxes and housing
"kill housing/mortgage "business" once and forever, so that workforce can easily find a place to live near business centers."
There's only so much housing and land around major business centres, if you act to prevent property bubbles by what will act as price controls, then how will housing be allocated? Even in the fully controlled economies of the Soviet Union, many workers faced very long commutes because it was not feasible to match housing needs and employment needs in near enough the same place.
> Soviet Union, many workers faced very long commutes
- fair point. But they also had fairly extensive and cheap public transport. Most of Europe has it too.
Why is UK's public transport so expensive and tax-costly? Does the low-taxed single housing in London make sense? Low population density makes public transportation a double burden.
Dear President: FAFO
See title.
Euro tech
So why is the European flavour of Linux to be based on RedHat?
Re: Euro tech
Which European flavour of Linux?
What's needed is for the various EU vendors to stop issuing statements and get down to producing and promoting an EU-based stack from server to desktop. All the bits are there but as long as their vendors are each doing their individual thing Microsoft can pick them off one at a time.
Re: Euro tech
https://eu-os.eu/
Its not actually been blessed by Queen Ursula. Still Fedora is an odd choice choice for a POC. They could have just used Astra Linux or openKylin.
Right now, EU OS is not a project of the European Union. Instead, EU OS is a community-led Proof-of-Concept.
Why does EU OS propose to rely on Fedora-based Linux distributions?
First of all, EU OS is not a product (yet), but only a Proof-of-Concept. The choice of Fedora-based Linux distributions or the desktop environment KDE is not a core concern as it does not impact much how admins manage users and their data, software and devices.
Re: Euro tech
Not even sure it's community-led, that seems to be [1]some guy's website .
Back in the real world, I'd have thought the obvious choice would have been SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE.
[1] https://gitlab.com/groups/eu-os/-/group_members
"Microsoft has met the letter of the law"
Which law? Where EU & US laws contradict each other it cannot meet both.
Does that include us Brits as European but only if we give you our fish stocks and billions to squander on white elephant projects and broken economies of countries like Spain and Greece, that Germany punished?
Spain's economy [1]doesn't seem that broken .
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y7jmlyx02o
It's already too late!
> Just a swipe of the pen in the White House could force US tech giants to disclose all manner of data, some of which might have privacy or commercial implications.
The US Cloud Act (enacted in 2018) already means that the data you store in a US supplier's cloud (even if physically located in the EU) is fair game for US authorities.
Far too many EU organisations have been quietly ignoring this fact since the law was enacted while claiming that their use of US cloud infrastructure is compatible with the GDPR. It isn't.
Taxes and housing
Such proposals often seem like suggestions to spend more taxpayer's money by the EU central government. But bureaucratic solutions are not the way to go.
Most Californian companies employ a lot of foreigners, including Europeans. So why do they move to California?
Solutions: stop taxing work; tax high risk investments less; and most importantly - kill housing/mortgage "business" once and forever, so that workforce can easily find a place to live near business centers.
The housing issue has plagued USA, Europe and recently China. It is this banking profiteering/pyramid that has caused recent enormous debt, money printing, and finally inflation. Housing must be regulated similar to energy supply monopolies, so that possible gains should never be spectacular, just reasonably sustainable and reasonably investable - like bonds. Don't allow banks easily create mortgage debt, so they are forced to reallocate their energy to financing entrepreneurship instead.
EU could also issue "green cards" to foreigners having high tech qualifications. Especially young. Multiple European languages are a substantial barrier by itself - so let's remove one.