Four charts show Europe’s reliance on U.S. digital infrastructure
As geopolitical tensions between the EU and the US escalate, these charts show how dependent the continent is on American technology providers, despite the promise of greater independence.
US President Donald Trump has imposed tariffs on the continent since returning to the White House last year, causing headaches and fear in Europe as he initially refused to rule out military action to seize Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory., before stepping back.
As the long-standing transatlantic alliance looks uncertain, European governments are increasingly taking action to advance digital autonomy. Critics of Europe’s reliance on US companies for digital infrastructure warn that US law enforcement could seek user data from American companies regardless of where the data is stored under the Cloud Act.
But technology providers from the other side of the Atlantic still dominate Europe.
European cloud providers have been steadily losing ground to their US rivals over the past nine years, holding less than 15% of the market in 2025, according to data from Synergy Research Group, a market analytics company.
“It will be incredibly difficult for European cloud providers to meaningfully reverse the market share trend,” John Dinsdale, the group’s chief analyst, told CNBC.
“It’s a game of scale. To become a leading player, you need to continually invest large amounts in research, service development, technical infrastructure, customer support and channel partners,” he added. “You also need to have brand awareness and the ability to operate globally, or at least across multiple geographies.”
Amazon, Microsoft And Google While controlling more than 70% of the European cloud market, the European companies with the largest share in the market are the German duo of SAP And German Telecom2% each, according to Synergy data.
“If you could go back 10 years and rewrite history, maybe one or two European companies could and should have set up their own stand to become a leading player in the cloud market, but they didn’t,” Dinsdale said.
Stating that Amazon gained a great early mover advantage by being the first to move in the market, Amazon added that Microsoft and Google followed from afar. “Oracle has finally gotten serious about cloud and is now growing rapidly, and neocloud companies are targeting specific services with some success.”
Although SAP has the largest share of Europe’s enterprise software market, at least 59% is held by US companies, according to data in a December report to the European Parliament. Seer and Microsoft control 18% and 10% respectively. Enterprise software market data refers to Europe as a whole, including non-EU members such as the United Kingdom and Switzerland.
SAP CEO Christian Klein told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday that “many political leaders are now looking at technology in a way that will gain dominance,” and “it’s not just about where we store data and how we manage data, but also how we gain dominance on the software side.”
Customer relationship management software is an industry dominated by a single player. sales forceWhile SAP comes in second place, data from the European Parliament report refers only to the 27 members of the European Union, showed.
