Towards the Cloud and AI Development Act: the EU prepares an action on data centres, cloud and computing capacity for AI.

The EU Commission is working on a possible Cloud and AI Development Act (CADA), with the aim of strengthening the European capacity of data centres and cloud services as an enabling condition for the development and adoption of Artificial Intelligence.

Data centres are essential for the entire lifecycle of large AI models (training and execution) and EU capacity is considered insufficient, impacting innovation and competitiveness.

On a geopolitical-industrial level, the extra-EU dependence is highlighted: for the same GDP, the US would have about twice the European share in global data centre capacities and three US operators would represent about 65% of the EU market for cloud services. In this context, the lack of highly secure EU-based offers for "highly critical" use cases and the difficulty of member states in converging on common requirements, after the stalemate on the EUCS cybersecurity cloud certification scheme, is also mentioned.

The initiative is part of a broader strategy: to develop the CADA and a single cloud policy for public administrations and procurement; moreover, the CADA is presented as complementary to the Data Act (largely applicable from 12 September 2025) and coordinated with EU action for AI (including AI factories/gigafactories for "ready to use" HPC).