European Commission makes money available for its own cloud infrastructure

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In Europe, companies depend on American cloud providers. The European Commission is therefore making money available for its own cloud infrastructure.

The European Commission makes money available for so-called IPCEI projects. The abbreviation stands for ‘Important Project of Common European Interest’ and covers a wide range of projects. To be considered an IPCEI project, economic growth must be achieved, jobs must be created or the projects must respond to the EU’s green and digital ambitions.

European cloud infrastructure

One of those IPCEI projects is developing cloud infrastructure. European companies that place part of their activities in the cloud usually have to contact American providers for this. Although they usually have data centers within the European Union, a lot of money flows to non-EU companies. European support must ensure that European cloud providers also gain a foothold.

A lot of money is being made available for this. About 1.2 billion euros of this comes from taxes from seven European countries: Germany, France, Hungary, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland and Spain. The European Commission is also counting on 1.4 billion euros from the private sector to cover the costs.

19 different projects

The project is an attempt to overpower cloud providers AWS, Microsoft in Google Cloud to decrease. Various feats are planned for this purpose. “Cloud-Edge Continuum Infrastructure” is one of the pillars of the project. The intention is to develop interfaces that can be attached to existing infrastructure. Another pillar, that of “Cloud-Edge Capabilities”, should become a reference that makes it possible to link products from different providers.

In addition to building a rigid cloud infrastructure, we are also working on tools and applications to work with that infrastructure. A total of 19 different projects from 19 different companies are planned. These all fall into 4 subcategories.

An overview of which parties are working on what projects. © European Commission

The project should produce the first results by 2027, according to EU Commissioner Didier Reynders. The project is expected to create approximately 1,000 jobs. That number would increase fivefold once the project reaches the commercial phase. The R&D for and rollout of the products from the project would last until 2031.