Amazon Web Services (AWS) has made its AWS European Sovereign Cloud entity generally available.

The offering is an independent cloud for European customers, physically and logically separate from other AWS regions. In addition to now being generally available, AWS has revealed plans to expand its infrastructure beyond the initial region based in Germany.

The company will establish sovereign AWS Local Zones located in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Portugal.

Local Zones are a regional Edge offering from AWS, bringing compute and storage closer to the end user to reduce latency. It will also enable customers to not only keep their workloads within the EU, but within country boundaries.

Among Amazon's launch partners for the offering is open source giant SUSE, which confirmed it will be offering its Linux products on the AWS Marketplace, including SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and SLES for SAP.

AWS notes that while most customers will be able to meet required residents and sovereignty requirements through their existing European cloud regions, which are "sovereign by design," the AWS European Sovereign Cloud solution enables customers to meet the EU's most stringent sovereignty requirements.

Customers can also opt for other AWS offerings within the European Sovereign Cloud, including AWS Dedicated Local Zones, AWS AI Factories, or AWS Outposts in locations they select, including their own on-premises data centers.

"Europe needs access to the most robust cloud and AI technology. The expansion of AWS innovation across Europe will help supercharge customers’ growth and AI ambitions," said Stéphane Israël, managing director of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and digital sovereignty. “Customers want the best of both worlds – they want to be able to use AWS's full portfolio of cloud and AI services while ensuring they can meet their stringent sovereignty requirements. By building a cloud that is European in its infrastructure, operations, and governance, we're empowering organisations to innovate with confidence while maintaining complete control over their digital assets.”

The EU sovereign offering was established as its own company in June 2025, having been in the works since October 2023. In 2024, the company revealed it would invest some €7.8 billion ($8.47 billion) in its sovereign cloud infrastructure in Germany through 2040, with the first region to be based in Brandenburg. The new Local Zones will be made through additional investment.

In November 2025, AWS detailed its European Sovereign Cloud offering in a whitepaper, laying out the key elements of the offering. A key concern pertained to the US CLOUD Act, and whether the new business would be subject to it.

On this, AWS said: "AWS reviews every law enforcement request individually and independently. AWS commits to use every reasonable effort to redirect any governmental body requesting AWS European Sovereign Cloud restricted data to the applicable customer; promptly notify the applicable customer about the AWS European Sovereign Cloud-restricted data request, and if AWS is prohibited from notifying a customer about the request, AWS will use all legally valid efforts to obtain a waiver of prohibition to allow AWS to communicate as much information as possible to the customer, and use all legally valid efforts to challenge any request that conflicts with the law of the European Union or applicable Member State law."