Europe’s EURO 3C project aims to federate cloud, AI infrastructure across borders

Europe has taken another step toward digital sovereignty with the launch of EURO 3C, a federated cloud and artificial intelligence initiative backed by the European Commission and announced by Telefónica at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Rather than attempting to build a new hyperscale cloud from scratch, the project seeks to interconnect existing national infrastructure into a coordinated network that spans the continent.

More than 70 organizations have joined the effort, including telecom operators, technology firms, startups, and small and medium sized enterprises. Together, they plan to create a federated model in which cloud, AI, and edge resources operate across borders while remaining anchored in European governance frameworks.

Telefónica executives described the initiative as a response to structural dependency on non European hyperscalers. In recent years, outages affecting major US cloud providers have intensified debate within the European Union about resilience, economic exposure, and strategic autonomy. As a result, policymakers and industry leaders have increased investment in sovereign cloud and AI infrastructure.

Instead of centralizing everything into one mega provider, EURO 3C connects distributed nodes across member states. This model will enable each country to retain its local control while providing compute, storage, and AI to a wider federation. Therefore, it will be possible to run applications in different countries without leaving a trusted European environment.

Project leaders have identified sectors such as automotive, e health, public administration, and government cloud as early priorities. In addition, the initiative emphasizes support for advanced AI systems capable of autonomous action, often referred to as agentic AI. These workloads require scalable edge compute and strong data governance controls, particularly when they process sensitive public or industrial data.

However, we must consider a broader context. As digital services expand and AI systems consume more infrastructure resources, policymakers and industry leaders now treat scale as a strategic issue. The Europeans have argued that developing connected capacity will reduce their reliance on external sources in the long term. At the same time, it will boost their industrial competitiveness.

Can EURO 3C compete with the scale that established hyperscalers already command? Observers have yet to see the answer.