Germany & France Hope Cloud Data Project GAIA-X Will Boost Sovereignty

Germany and France on Thursday to launched a project to set up a European cloud computing platform.

that they hope will enhance European economic sovereignty in these wake of the coronavirus crisis &
break the continent’s dependence on US and Chinese companies.These platform, entitled GAIA-X, is
meant to be up and running at least in prototype form — at the beginning of the next year and be open to
users from outside Europe that commit to adhere to European standards. The German Economy Peter
Altmaier said that the aim is “nothing less than a European moonshot in digital policy.”

Non Profit Association
Germany & France will set up a non-profit association to coordinate and organize these data
infrastructure, Altmaier said. The Conceived last year and initially announced in October, GAIA-X follows
on the heels of an existing push by the European Union’s two biggest economies to set up a car battery
consortium aimed at catching up with Asian rivals.These cloud computing project “could not have been
more timely” as Europe tries to dig itself out of a deep recession caused by the coronavirus crisis, French
Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire said.

COVID-19 Crisis Company

The COVID crisis, companies massively shifted to teleworking. This makes the need for (a) secure &
European cloud solution all the more urgent,” Le Maire told a news conference by video link from
Paris.These crisis also showed that the giant tech companies are the winners . the European digital
space has to be protected,” he added, pledging that the new platform “will ensure the application of
policy rules based on EU values and standards.”They are not China, we are not the United States — we
are European countries with our own values and our own economic interests that we want to defend,” Le
Maire said. This stressed the importance of “interoperability,” allowing companies to switch easily to the
new system without losing any data.They two ministers said the project has brought together 22
companies in France and Germany, including Dassault Systemes, Orange, Siemens, SAP, Robert
Bosch, and Deutsche Telekom. They didn’t give financial details. Le Maire called on “all other European
companies and countries” to join the initiative.

Data Migration

These idea is that we invite companies across the world providing their cloud services according to
European standards and rules,” Altmaier said. The Everyone who wants to have the label of GAIA-X will
have to respect and to satisfy several sets of rules,” including on interoperability and data migration.They
said that the project’s success “will be crucial for Germany, for France and for Europe as far as our
economic strength, our competitivity and our sovereignty are concerned.”