DIGITAL SOVEREIGNTY
Data sovereignty isn’t an add-on for Struktura — it’s the foundation Struktura is built on, and it is fast becoming the foundation every European company will stand on. Here is what it means when the question reaches your boardroom.
*AI Treat it as a board risk, not an IT detail. A sanction, a trade dispute, a change of ownership, a political order — and a provider under American or Chinese control can be compelled to cut your access, hand over your data, or simply turn your systems dark. Your ERP, your invoicing, your customer records: reachable by someone whose interests aren’t yours — or unreachable to you. This isn’t hypothetical leverage; it is written into law (the US CLOUD Act and FISA; China’s National Intelligence Law). The question a CFO must be able to answer: if that switch were flipped tomorrow, what would still be ours?
*AI Every example below is documented — sources are linked throughout — and none of it required anyone to break a law. Your CTO probably knows them already. The point is that they belong in the risk register, next to currency and supplier risk — which makes them CFO and CEO territory.
The legal floor moves too: twice, the EU Court of Justice has struck down the framework for transatlantic data transfers (Safe Harbor, Privacy Shield). Today’s version rests on a US executive order — changeable with a single signature. If your continuity plan assumes the rules of 2024 still apply in 2027, that is a risk entry, not an assumption.
Struktura sells compliance, so I don’t outsource my own sovereignty: the entire digital backbone runs on European and open-source platforms: hosting in Germany (Hetzner), self-hosted deploy and backend (Coolify, PocketBase), passwords in Switzerland (Proton Pass), DNS in Denmark (Simply.com), mail in Germany (Mailbox.org), privacy-first analytics (Plausible), my own files (Nextcloud). No US hyperscaler. No Google. And this was no weekend experiment: I moved service by service while the business kept running — every choice had to survive daily operations. For a compliance firm the clean stack isn’t a cost line — it is the proof — and it typically runs 30–60% cheaper than the American default; independent price comparisons of European providers against the hyperscalers find savings in that range or larger (price comparison, 2026).
Sovereignty has a price, and I won’t pretend otherwise. My mail lives with Mailbox.org in Germany instead of Google — it works, but I feel the difference: search is slower, the ecosystem is smaller, and things that simply “happened by themselves” in Google’s world occasionally need a manual or a workaround. Calendar invitations across ecosystems can be stubborn. And 100% purity doesn’t exist: silicon is global, and some layers will never be fully European — anyone promising total independence is selling something.
But look at what is actually on that list: inconveniences — not lost capability, not lost data, not lost control. The switching cost is real, bounded and paid once; dependency is paid every day, and that invoice arrives at the worst possible moment. The point isn’t purity but direction and control: knowing exactly where every dependency sits, who could reach it, and having a way out. Most organisations have never mapped that. I have — and that is exactly where an engagement starts.
FROM PROBLEM TO PLAN
Data boundaries, NIS2, DORA and the push for European digital infrastructure: sovereignty is moving from “nice to have” to a baseline expectation — and boards will be asked to show their work. Struktura has walked this path. Here are the three ways I walk it with you:
I map your dependence on American and Chinese technology — cloud, SaaS, hardware, apps — and who can legally reach what. You get a report that goes straight into the risk register and onto the board’s table: here is the exposure, here are the exit options.
Concrete recommendations in order: what can move now, what needs maturing — and what it costs. Typically the bill lands 30–60% below the American default. The plan includes the certification track: labels such as Software Hosted in Europe and Software Made in Europe from the European DIGITAL SME Alliance (digitalsme.eu) make your sovereignty verifiable — for customers, auditors and the board. This is home ground for me: I have worked with the European frameworks for e-invoicing, compliance and data security — including in Brussels.
Once the plan is approved, Struktura can take project leadership: vendor selection, migration, security and handover to operations — end to end. I have moved a business service by service while it kept running. Your project gets the same rigour.
Together or separately — most start with the mapping.
Sovereignty doesn’t stop at the data centre — the next dependency is the device in your hand. So I’m moving to a Jolla Phone (Sailfish OS, assembled in Finland): the European answer to the Android/iOS duopoly, with a physical privacy switch and no calling home. Even here the honesty holds — the chip isn’t European. That is the level of thoroughness a sovereignty project deserves, in every corner. If you face the same assessment, or have a sharper idea for closing the last gap, get in touch. That conversation is exactly the point.
*AI Struktura can map your dependence on American and Chinese technology and lay out an exit plan — and/or build and migrate you to an EU-native, GDPR-clean stack. Together or separately. I don’t just describe the path — I walk it myself.
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