Europe reportedly wants tougher criteria for bidding on government cloud projects.
That’s according to a report Monday (June 1) from Reuters, which said that this move by the European Commission (EC) could leave companies such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft locked out from such projects.
The report, citing documents viewed by Reuters journalists, said the proposal is part of the European Commission’s Cloud and AI Development Act, set to be announced this week along with other measures designed to lessen Europe’s reliance on American tech while promoting European businesses.
According to the report, the proposal includes mandatory “non-price” criteria for public tenders, or procurement bids, such as requirements for software and hardware developed within the EU, which Reuters noted would put American tech giants at a disadvantage.
The law’s other criteria for choosing cloud vendors include data protection standards and how open the companies’ respective markets are for cloud services, Reuters said.
The report added that this plan could see backlash from President Donald Trump’s administration, which has criticized EU laws designed to put limits on Big Tech companies. In a speech last year, the president called the bloc’s curbs on U.S. tech giants a “form of taxation.”
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The European Commission told Reuters the legislation was “crucial for strengthening Europe’s own technological capacities, for Europe’s competitiveness and security” but declined to comment further.
In other tech regulation news, PYMNTS wrote recently about the changing federal contracting rulebook, which now subjects companies to “overlapping demands spanning cybersecurity certifications, new purchasing mandates and diversity-related restrictions.”
This pressure, the report added, is leading an increasing share of the industry to embed artificial intelligence (AI) directly into compliance operations to keep up.
The report cited an article by Chris Crowder, executive vice president of government contracting solutions at Unanet, in Federal News Network, drawing on findings from Unanet’s 2026 GAUGE benchmarking report.
Thirty-six percent of government contracting firms are already employing AI to support compliance work, Crowder said, while another 42% of these companies are actively exploring it.
“Compliance is no longer just about avoiding penalties,” PYMNTS wrote. “In a market where federal agencies are paying close attention to contractor performance, firms that handle compliance well are gaining a real advantage in winning new work. The ones that rely on manual processes and periodic reviews are increasingly at a disadvantage.”
