On Saturday 24 October, AWS carried out a test in which the AWS European Sovereign Cloud ran for several hours without any connection to the company’s global systems. According to AWS, workloads remained active and customers retained access to their data. The company is positioning the outcome as proof that the environment can function independently of infrastructure outside the EU.
The AWS European Sovereign Cloud has been generally available since January 2026 as a separate cloud environment for Europe. The first region is located in Brandenburg, Germany. According to AWS, the environment is physically and logically separated from the other AWS regions and has no critical dependencies on infrastructure outside the EU. The company says customer content and customer-created metadata remain within the EU.
Two global systems switched off
Under normal circumstances, the Sovereign Cloud uses two global systems: the backbone of the AWS Global Network and a system managed by the local EU team for limited and controlled transfers of operational AWS data. In an explanation published in advance, AWS European Sovereign Cloud: demonstrating an independent operation, AWS stated that neither system is critical to the operation of the environment.
During the test, the team switched off both systems. Traffic that normally runs over the backbone was rerouted via the public internet. AWS reports that for several hours the environment ran exclusively on its own software and hardware resources and was managed by staff who live in the EU and were located there at the time. According to the company, workloads remained active and customers retained access to their data. AWS says the availability of services within the Sovereign Cloud, in other AWS regions and via private connections with AWS Direct Connect was not affected. Afterwards, traffic was routed via the usual path again.
AWS states that, under normal conditions, the connection to the global network is a choice made for performance, reliability, security and cost, rather than a technical dependency. According to the company, the network cannot view the encrypted customer data.
Management through German legal entities
The Sovereign Cloud is managed through European legal entities under German law that were established for this purpose. The test was commissioned by Stéphane Israël, Managing Director AWS European Sovereign Cloud and Digital Sovereignty, and Managing Director Stefan Hoechbauer. Israël and Hoechbauer are EU citizens who live in the EU and are responsible for infrastructure, technology and services. According to AWS, only EU residents located within the EU have control over operations and support. The company says it is working step by step towards a situation in which the environment is managed exclusively by EU citizens in the EU.
Evidence for regulators
AWS expects organisations in regulated sectors and the public sector to be able to use the outcome as evidence for regulators and boards, for example in compliance and assurance documentation. The test was carried out and reported by AWS itself; independent verification by a third party is not mentioned in the announcement.
Two partners have responded to the outcome. Emanuele Baldassarre, Managing Director at Accenture, calls operational independence a defining pillar of digital sovereignty. Accenture was already working with the Sovereign Cloud team before the launch and aims to guide customers through sovereignty requirements, Baldassarre says. Daniel Karadza, Senior Director Partners and Alliances EMEA Central and Benelux at Genesys, says Genesys uses the environment to serve European organisations with data and operations within the EU. Karadza expects the test to give customers more confidence to move sensitive workloads to the cloud.
The full report can be read at AWS European Sovereign Cloud: demonstrating an independent operation.
This article was originally published in Dutch on MSP Business. Read the original →
