‘A threat to autonomy’: Dutch parliament urges government to move away from US cloud services

The Dutch parliament has adopted several motions to urge the government to stop relying on US cloud technology. 

The motions describe the Dutch government’s dependence on US technology as a “threat to the autonomy and cybersecurity” of the country and ask the government to stop using these services. 

The US CLOUD Act, which was signed into law by US President Donald Trump during his first mandate, lets law enforcement agencies subpoena US-based technology companies to access their cloud data to help investigate serious crimes. 

The Netherlands Court of Audit found in January that many government ministries have used public clouds hosted by Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services without being aware of the potential risks. 

Dutch government asked to build a national cloud

While the debate on Dutch cloud service providers has been ongoing since at least 2022, experts told Euronews Next that the issue has taken on a new urgency with Trump’s second mandate. 

Trump has not yet signalled that he would invoke the CLOUD Act, but experts said that he could ask cloud providers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to either surrender Dutch data or force these companies to no longer provide their technology to the government. This could cause significant disruptions for public services. 

The Dutch government has also been asked to come up with a strategy to wean itself off US platforms. 

Another motion calls on the government to issue a tender for a national cloud to be built under “full Dutch management” to store confidential communications and data between departments. 

It also asks the government to reconsider the use of Amazon’s web services to host the Netherlands’ internet domain and to give European firms preferential treatment in public tenders.