Keeping app data purely server-side is no longer viable for customers with data sovereignty requirements, and having a toggle button saying 'Keep my data in Europe' isn't enough either because it places too much trust in the SaaS provider.
With network monitoring verifying local applications are accessing user-verified endpoints, privacy reduces to OS-level security.
We could also have everything on a cloud in a foreign country with a mad king, but what would be the benefits of that?
I think the point is that your doctor or civil servant or local sushi shop shouldn't have to reach to AWS/GCP/Oracle each time they want to look up an MRI or building permit or loyalty points card status.
"local" is a relative term here.
Suppose I am an indian developer interested to work with European Data sovereignity because imo I value privacy personally just as much as the EU population and it would be great to be more connected and wishing to connect with them more.
So I have thought of using EU options in my servers/services if I use them for the most part and I can even swap out to completely European if need be.
So let's say to be a part of this? should I be an European company? If so, I even looked at it on how to establish a company in Europe rather easily (preferably a lean company) and It seems that Estonia seems the best way for me to create an EU company from my country without too much hassle but the costs of operation does feel like a lot for just starting out let's say.
I am also not sure about the fact that given I live in India, Some data sharing arrangement can be generated or would I have to actually migrate to say EU (which although I love EU, I currently appreciate my country as well and migration is a hassle right now)
I wish if such a manifesto could work for India and EU and a deeper integration could be made between the two countries about such tech related software or other as I have been a vocal supporter of European tech providers like hetzner,ovh etc. and they are even cheaper than american hyperscalers in many/most cases.
When I worked at AWS, there was GovCloud, and only American citizens residing in American soil and connecting from American soil were able to give support to these customers. So even if you were legally authorised to work in the US and resided in the US, you couldn't work with GovCloud customers.
Or if you are an American temporarily residing in Romania or Canada, then you also can't work with GovCloud customers.
I expect the same situation will happen to you. But I am just speculating.
A European sovereign cloud is desperately needed for highly sensitive government, military, and national security workloads, and these must be thoroughly vetted to ensure compliance.
But for anything else, like personal e-mail or e-commerce? I'm sure there will be a lot of flexibility for non-European contributions, but it will probably be like it currently is: open source projects spanning the globe.
My focus was on the more of a Eu-alternatives kind of thing. I want my idea of privacy to be aligned and EU seems perfect for that. I want to provide sustainability in an idea & can establish an EU company or partner up with one.
My question is that I would still live in India for the most part starting out & I might be unable to make an EU company in the start too but if I am required, then I will do so
Aside from this, I am willing to use only EU services internally for my product as well as I mentioned.
is there any way that I can still align myself with the EU-alternatives mission?
Might sound a bit strange but I want to come into Eu but I can't because immigration is hard/expenses and I want to come to Europe when I finally figure out things/have a decent product in the first place.
Some people told me to create an EU company which holds an Indian company as a consultancy firm and you can be part of both and manage to establish a Data sharing policy given that I can access EU data from Indian soil so If I can do something about it.
I am not really familiar with EU laws tho so I am interested to hear more from people actually interested.
I’m sure your desire to help is genuine. But Europe might need to find their own feet with an initiative like this before accepting help from foreigners.
Clients of mine are on hyperscalers due to the ease of deployment,etc but they are focused on lock-in, if ease could be attained in combination with portability then an ecosystem could exist where mid-scaler providers (that exists in abundance in Europe) could have a better chance against the behemoths.
Well, if Europe existed without them, then Europe likely wouldn't have ever home-grown all the advances from the more entrepreneurially-minded countries.
The EU and India are starting to work on formalizing a data transfer mechanism similar to the EU-US Data Transfer Mechanism (DTM) as part of the EU-India TTC [0] (a US-EU TTC was a a precursor to formalizing the EU-US DTM).
Depending on how the EU-India FTA shakes out (signing after Republic Day on January 27th), it might make it easier to "India-wash" American services exports (which is already what is happening).
The fact that an EU "sovereign" cloud like STACKIT is using American-Israeli security software [1] (though they did open an office in Prague to outsource some development, but is largely done in Israel I believe) and Google Workspaces [2] as part of it's sovereign cloud initiative highlights how it's all HN bark with little-to-no bite.
That said, kudos to SpaceTime [3] for trying to leverage the momentum to build a GTM channel via NukeProof.
[0] - https://in.boell.org/en/2025/05/27/tapping-momentum-eu-india...
[1] - https://www.sentinelone.com/press/sentinelone-and-schwarz-di...
[2] - https://gruppe.schwarz/en/press/archive/2024/companies-of-sc...
[3] - https://spacetime.eu/blog/nuke-proof-alliance-launches-to-br...
But this is the first time I hear someone mention "India-wash" American services exports?
What do you mean in this context? I hope it's nothing deregoratory but I am simply confused by this term.
Personally I meant either hosting open source software or building my own open source software and hosting it for the most part imo.
I don't know what you mean by India-wash though?
I think this might be the only option available right? Do you know of any other option perhaps cheaper than this?
I think I can only promise at this point that if project becomes worth it ie. makes reasonably lot more than >1500 per year then the project might migrate to as such.
I was seeing an estimates of 300$-400$ on internet and I assumed that was expensive (here, the MSME's don't even require a company formation itself & you get benefits of payment dispute collection & investment from govts directly and lower rate loans and you can get it all online just using aadhaar card which everyone has)
LLC's are a bit of a mess with accounting (I actually wanted to be chartered accountant during my middle school so I saw they make a bank in fees comparatively too) but its still pretty reasonable.
Anyways, what would be the best bet, would this still be the best bet or is there anything which can allow for something say cheaper/easier? Would say having an European co-founder might help comparatively in the fees/other options?
I have decided to be transparent and here's what I will most likely do if I ever create a company.
I would firstly create an Indian company & operate it as such. I will try to be GDPR compliant from day one, and still use EU providers/privacy providing services instead of hyperscalers in general.
Instead of trying to get a legal thing which says EU first or India first, I will try to be privacy first, by open sourcing things or relying and contributing to either open source or at the very least source available licenses (so that people can indepdently audit, I prefer using open source but we will see how much monetizable it is, I am not looking for too much money as I am frugal but still I do want sustainability, I might start out source available and pledge to release it open source once the project might reach enough users let's say or I can earn "enough" with a proper definition)
So a big emphasis on privacy & sustainability. most EU cloud options are definitely green as well (like Netcup) so I can get that checkbox available as well most likely but there isn't any guarantee but still my point is I would still try to keep Climate change in mind as a factor hopefully too while still optimizing for a good enough price range.
I will also create a blog post probably highlighting all of this and also the fact that I am willing to go EU first if my product would focus on EU/actually trends with EU consumers/businesses & then I will establish an estonia company as people have said here and make my Indian company the subsidiary of my estonian company and use either a fin-tech solution either from the start of my Indian company which could support SEPA or other EU solutions or I will do it afterwards with a proper bank account/fin-tech support after I make an estonian company (which I would if my project can make say make some fixed amount of money most likely from EU customers such that the 1000 euros or more becomes a reasonable investment, or If I ever create a EU branch, my point is I will try to make the EU branch the head branch and Indian branch subsidiary and not vice versa hopefully though, currently please take what I am saying with a grain of salt as I can be wrong I usually am, I am just figuring out life :] and how to build and live off of building things that I myself would enjoy working on/the ideas around it like infrastructure decisions etc!)
My point is I am very much more open to work with sustainability/privacy goals with a more focus on open source and probably try not to take any VC funding hopefully and still be day one profitable & transparent/sustainable. Nothing's set in stone right now but hopefully I am able to explain what I think about these ideas.
All MacOS, iOS, Windows and Android are all produced by the USA. Virtually all chips as well.
It is foolish to assume there are not backdoors in every one of them.
Meaning we should assume the USA can shut down the entire Europe's IT if they really want to.
Then you got the authentication systems, security software (antivirus, proxies like cloudflare, crowdstrike and so on), the various Saas (docs editors, drives, ticket systems, chats...), the payment systems (including Visa and swift, but also Paypal, google pay, stripe, etc), the software stores, the root DNS, the SSL root certificates and a ton of network hardware.
Given the current political situation, it's a very bad spot to be in.
I only knew there is a bad cookie banner when I've opened the website in another browser.
Have mercy, webmasters.
I mean, if a project is not able to get a functioning website, then well...
Unless you're a hyperscaler yourself, hyperscaling is overrated.
It's already an uphill battle, because humans in large organisations seem to have an innately conservative bias which says that "nobody ever got fired for choosing ${giganticEvilStatusQuoCorporation}". That, combined with the fact that the US hyperscalars have, I dunno, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of ability to put their thumb on the political and regulatory scales, make this an uphill battle. There will need to be a specific plan for leveling the playing field.
What is that plan?
I'm at a point in my life (personal bandwidth hovering near 0%) where I'm not getting involved in anything unless I have not just a good reason ("this is a noble agenda; somebody should do something about it, and hey, I guess I'm a somebody"), but a damned specific reason ("I have unique capabilities which can help this specific initiative in this specific way").
Anyhow, in this particular domain, I'm pretty sure there are people who could be MUCH more useful contributors than I. I'd love to forward the "manifesto" to them -- except I know that they're in the same position as me: essentially zero bandwidth. Any new project they get involved with means dropping something else that's currently on their plate, and is presumably important. They're not going to do that on a lark. They'll need need a damned good reason to participate, before deciding to spend time on something new.
To be honest, ANY real power-players will be in this position. They don't have free time on their hands; they won't just join up in the vague hope that maybe it'll be a place where things can happen. You will need power-players on-side, and without a much more specific proposition, you're not going to get them.
But I'm glad you've joined. Job no. 1: that manifesto needs to do a lot more manifesting before it's fit for purpose!
AI slop again?
So much for EU-something, riddled with EU-problems.
