Amazon Web Services is making its European Sovereign Cloud generally available and, in that context, is planning new local AWS zones in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
AWS has officially launched its European Sovereign Cloud. The AWS cloud environment is physically and logically separated from other AWS regions and is located exclusively within the European Union. The solution is aimed at organizations with strict requirements regarding data residency, operational independence, and compliance. The first region was rolled out in Brandenburg, Germany. Belgium and the Netherlands are next on the agenda.
The cloud is fully managed by employees within the EU and is free of operational dependencies outside European borders. Users retain complete control over the location of their data, including metadata such as user rights and configurations. AWS also guarantees that European customers will have access to the full range of services, including more than 90 cloud services and AI capabilities.
Separate entity and extreme circumstances
To guarantee the sovereign nature of the cloud solution, AWS has introduced a new European governance model. A separate entity, led by EU citizens, manages the operation. This is important, since sovereignty is primarily a legal issue, rather than a technical one. After all, American companies are subject to American law, including with regard to their foreign activities.
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AWS even refers to ‘extreme circumstances’ in which European citizens will have independent access to the source code of the AWS services in order to maintain the sovereign cloud. This seems to suggest that the sovereign region can even continue to exist independently in the event of a major rift between the US and the EU.
Local zone in Belgium and the Netherlands
AWS is expanding its European Sovereign Cloud to other member states. New AWS Local Zones are coming to Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal. These zones are part of the sovereign infrastructure and allow customers to store their data locally and run applications with low latency.
Amazon is planning an investment of more than 7.8 billion euros in the German rollout of the AWS Sovereign Cloud. The expansion to other countries is in addition to this investment.
The expansion plans for Belgium became known in 2021, and the arrival in Brussels was confirmed in 2022. AWS is lagging behind Microsoft in terms of local availability in our region, which opened the fully-fledged data center region Azure Belgium Central at the end of 2025. However, this does not come with the same sovereignty guarantees.