Brussels. While the Italian parliament has been discussing a draft motion on the cloud for weeks, with which to direct the government’s moves, France has just adopted, on the same issue, a national strategy that is destined to be explosive.
The French reiterate a couple of points that are also debated by our parliament, such as the promotion of the use of the cloud by the PA and the special protection to be accorded to strategic data, but they add another, fundamental one, which is instead still absent from the Italian debate. France wants all PA data (all, therefore, not just strategic ones) to be managed by European cloud providers (i.e. with shareholdings from European Union companies) through servers located in the EU. In this way, France intends to steal the data of its PA from the accountability of foreign agencies, in particular the American ones which, according to the famous Cloud Act, can ask to have access to any data managed in Europe by an American cloud provider. , also in relation to data of European citizens. This can also happen to a European branch of an American operator (therefore, a Luxembourg or Irish branch of Amazon or Google).
The French model realistically recognizes that Europe cannot do without the best foreign technologies. For this reason, it is explicitly admitted that European cloud providers, enabled to provide services to the French PA, can make use of foreign software and technologies on the basis of licenses (for example Linus, Office, etc.).
This is a shrewd and realistic position, worthy of the transalpine cousins. Although the emphasis is placed on the “European” character of the cloud providers chosen for the French PA, it is undeniable that the national industry will be favored, where France can already deploy medium-sized companies such as Ovh and Atos. in this way, commercial protectionism is achieved, but without getting dirty.At the same time, the French do not prevent the access of the best technologies in the country, and therefore do not risk damaging their PA (and transalpine citizens).
The technological dependence on the USA and some other foreign countries obviously remains, but it could not be done otherwise, since neither Europe nor any single European state can boast sufficient technological autonomy or aspire to unlikely autarchic solutions. However, the data of the French PA will be more protected and, above all, the lever of public spending is used to grow national operators.
This is precisely the explosive aspect of the French strategy, on which I hope the Italian parliament will reflect before closing the discussions on the national cloud. At the moment, the hottest issue in Montecitorio seems to be that of the management of strategic data of the PA, a topic that deserves respect. However, the French initiative leads us to look further and should incentivize the Italian legislator to also prepare tools to grow the national industry, and in particular the private sector. The French rule according to which “PA data must be managed only by European operators with servers in Europe” could very well be introduced in the Italian parliamentary motion, without thereby damaging the principle of “strategic” data that Italian parliamentarians want to keep only on state-owned servers.
@InnoGenna
* Lawyer specialized in European policies and regulations for digital, competition and liberalization