Most large organisations think full digital sovereignty is unrealistic, Capgemini finds

European Union flags flying in a row in front of the modern Berlaymont building in Brussels, Belgium — **European flags flying in front of the Berlaymont building in Brussels.**

*Credit: Travel_Motion via Canva / Getty Images Signature*

Image Credits — **European flags flying in front of the Berlaymont building in Brussels.**

*Credit: Travel_Motion via Canva / Getty Images Signature*

Digital sovereignty has arrived in the boardroom and has immediately been downgraded.

Some 93% of large organisations have now discussed it at the board level, and 59% say full digital sovereignty is not a realistic goal, according to a Capgemini Research Institute survey of 1,300 business and technology executives published on Tuesday.

What has replaced the ambition is a narrower one. Two-thirds now define sovereignty as resilient interdependence, meaning selective control over the technologies that matter most combined with partnerships for everything else, rather than owning the stack.

That definition is markedly more popular in Europe, where 75% take it, than in the United States, where half do.

The gap between the two continents is not only definitional. Asked what sovereignty is for, 56% of UK organisations and 52% in continental Europe describe it as risk mitigation and resilience-building, against 41% in Asia-Pacific.

In the US, the majority answer is different: 52% view it primarily through a compliance lens, with 40% treating it as a resilience tool.

European and Asian firms also report significantly greater concern about keeping critical operations running amid geopolitical disruption than American or British firms.

The most useful findings are the ones about self-knowledge, and they are not flattering. Only 14% of organisations say they have end-to-end visibility into the dependencies across their broader technology ecosystem, which means the overwhelming majority cannot accurately assess the exposure they are now discussing at board level.

Capgemini’s own index, built on an analysis of 866 organisations across five dimensions, puts 86% of them as having significant exposure to foreign or externally controlled supply chains.

Switching is slow where it is possible at all. More than a third of organisations, 36%, say moving away from a critical technology provider would take upwards of twelve months, and one in ten say they have no viable alternative provider whatsoever.

Those two figures describe the actual shape of the problem better than any statement of board-level intent.

Preparedness is patchier still, and inverts the regional pattern. Among organisations that recently suffered operational disruptions, just 42% have contingency plans in place.

That rises to almost two-thirds in the US and falls to a little over a third in Europe and Asia-Pacific, which means the region most worried about disruption is the least ready for it.

Where the money is going is less surprising. Operational resilience against geopolitical volatility is the leading driver of sovereignty programmes, cited by four in five, and AI is the part of the stack organisations are prioritising, named by three quarters.

The concentration is heaviest in aerospace and defence and in transportation, which is to say among the organisations that run infrastructure a government would notice failing. Europe’s own tech sovereignty package is aimed at roughly the same list.

There is a price attached, and executives have named it. Just under half say they are willing to pay a “digital sovereignty premium”, which the survey puts at 23% on average.

That is a substantial figure to concede in writing, and it is the number that will decide how much of the boardroom enthusiasm survives a procurement cycle.

The findings land the same week Mistral raised €3bn at a valuation above €21bn on precisely the argument that customers want control of their own AI infrastructure, with the European Commission’s own Scaleup Europe Fund among the co-leads.

Read alongside each other, the two say something more specific than either alone: the demand is real, it is on the agenda, and the buyers do not believe they can have the whole thing. Europe’s cloud dependency is now a recognised political risk that most of its largest companies cannot map.

Karine Brunet, Capgemini’s chief operations and delivery officer, framed the conclusion as a matter of knowing rather than owning.

Complete independence is rarely achievable in interconnected ecosystems, she said, so the point is a clear understanding of technology dependencies sufficient to regain control and flexibility over risk.

That is a reasonable position, and it is also, conveniently, a description of consultancy work.

Story by Alina Maria Stan

Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moment (show all) Alina Maria Stan builds connections that people actually feel. As co-founder and COO of Tekpon, she turns product intuition into real moments of discovery, shaping how teams find and adopt SaaS every day. Since 2020, she has led Tekpon’s brand voice, media strategy, and growth plays with a clear focus on human outcomes behind every metric. Before Tekpon, Alina followed curiosity across industries and countries. She was CEO of King Casino Bonus and led affiliate and brand strategy at Extremoo Media and Fable Media in Denmark, where she learned how to build partnerships that last. Early on, she sharpened her CRM and pricing instincts at K.H. ApS, always asking why customers choose what they choose. Her approach is rooted in more than a decade of international experience and two master’s degrees, one in Sustainable Consumption from the Technical University of Munich and one in Consumer Affairs Management from Aarhus University.