The essentials
- An Ecipe study released in October 2026, funded by lobby group CCIA Europe, puts cumulative “economic exposure” from the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act at €115bn between 2027 and 2036 — roughly six times the Commission’s upper estimate of about €18bn.
- Nearly 70% of that central scenario is application migration and software redesign (€79.1bn over ten years), including a large private-sector share if sovereignty rules extend beyond public procurement.
- IT for Business notes that European software and cloud spend already flows mostly to US vendors: the macro argument does not replace your service inventory and cutover budget.
- Switching cloud or virtualisation is not moving VMs alone: directories, databases, firewalls, and vendor licences come along — and running two platforms in parallel can delay payback.
In a leadership meeting, someone throws up a headline: €115 billion to force a “sovereign” cloud on Europe. The room goes quiet. Finance asks whether your hosting project is about to blow up. IT knows the figure comes from a study paid for by the big US tech lobby — but lacks a plain answer. What’s missing is not a Brussels seminar: it’s your application list and your migration timeline.
Where does €115bn come from?
In mid-October 2026, think tank Ecipe published an analysis of the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), EU legislation inspired in part by France’s SecNumCloud approach, which at the strictest levels requires proof of immunity to extraterritorial laws. In its central scenario, Ecipe estimates €115bn of cumulative economic exposure between 2027 and 2036. The work was funded by CCIA Europe, whose members include AWS, Google, Apple, and Meta — that doesn’t make it false, but it isn’t neutral either: it steers the debate toward switching costs.
The gap versus the Commission’s assessment (about €18bn in the comparison reported in the press) is mostly scope: Ecipe models heavy application migrations (re-architecture, rewrites), higher run costs for qualified offers, and in its medium scenario a possible extension to private companies in essential sectors — while the Commission focused mainly on public procurement. The takeaway for you isn’t legal: when you change cloud provider, you rarely move disks only.
The bill you already recognise
Ecipe allocates €79.1bn over ten years to migration and software redesign — nearly 70% of the central total. That is the line item SMBs already feel when leaving VMware, a public cloud bill that keeps climbing, or a legacy host: directory, database, firewall, backup, monitoring. A VM that boots is not a business that works. Migration guides integrators published in October repeat the point: temporary fixes (widened firewall rules “so it holds”) last when nobody owns cleanup.
- Inventory by service, not by VM: who calls what, which data is critical, which vendors must confirm in writing that licences remain valid on the target.
- Coexistence: while old and new run together, you pay for both — and each extra week eats payback.
- Reversibility before signing: data export, contract exit, a rollback scenario that was tested, not just promised on a slide.
Putting the macro number in its place
An IT for Business piece (21 October 2026) sets the €115bn against another scale: European companies already spend hundreds of billions per year on software and cloud, with most going to US suppliers. The lobby’s shock figure then weighs a few percent of existing outflows — while noting that part of the €115bn would land with European integrators and vendors rather than across the Atlantic. For an SMB leader, the right question is not “for or against CADA”, but: what will the next switch cost us, and what if we don’t plan it?
If you are preparing a cloud move or a virtualisation exit and press figures are muddying the conversation, we can walk through your inventory and timeline on one page.
Sources
This note was drafted with AI tools from the cited sources, then reviewed and published under the responsibility of Jordan FOUASSIER, publication director. We summarise the facts and add our reading; source text and images are not reproduced. An error? Write to contact@aigyrosgroup.com.