European options and the jobs they do
OVHcloud and Scaleway from France and Hetzner from Germany are leading European alternatives for cloud infrastructure. They can cover virtual machines, storage, networking, bare metal, managed databases, and containers to different degrees, but they do not mirror every AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud service.
Cloud sovereignty is broader than the address of a data centre. The European Commission's framework evaluates strategic, legal, data, operational, supply-chain, technological, security, compliance, and sustainability dimensions. Customers should use similarly layered questions.
What to compare before switching
Infrastructure choices carry unusually high switching costs. Jurisdiction is only one layer: buyers should also test data location, remote-access exposure, operational control, supply-chain dependencies, model licensing, portability, and what happens if a supplier changes ownership.
Choose by workload. Hetzner is attractive for cost-effective compute and hosting; OVHcloud offers a broad European cloud and bare-metal portfolio; Scaleway provides developer-oriented cloud services. Design around open standards, containers, portable data, infrastructure as code, and tested backups to reduce dependence on any one supplier.
Ownership, scope and the shortlist
This guide uses European in a precise, disclosed way. Some options are based in the EU, some elsewhere in Europe, and some are open-source projects whose jurisdiction depends on the host you choose. None of those labels automatically guarantees privacy, security, good labour practices, or a perfect fit.
Treat this page as a shortlist, not a verdict. Federal Europa does not rank countries or sell placement in this guide. The useful outcome is a more contestable European market in which people and organisations can switch, export their data, and keep more than one credible door open.