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France Moves Health Data Hub to Domestic Cloud Provider in Shift Toward Digital Sovereignty

By  |  April 23, 2026
healthcare data

France has selected domestic cloud provider Scaleway to host its national Health Data Hub, marking a significant departure from its previous reliance on Microsoft Azure, according to Reuters. The announcement, made Thursday by Scaleway, ends a long-running and contentious arrangement that had drawn legal and political scrutiny.

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    The move reflects a broader European effort to reduce dependence on U.S.-based technology giants and strengthen regional control over sensitive data. According to Reuters, countries across Europe are increasingly pursuing “cloud sovereignty,” aiming to ensure that critical infrastructure and information remain subject only to European laws and oversight.

    Germany and Denmark have already taken similar steps. Per Reuters, the German state of Schleswig-Holstein is transitioning 30,000 government workstations away from Microsoft systems, while Denmark’s digital affairs ministry is adopting the open-source LibreOffice suite. Danish cities including Copenhagen and Aarhus have also made comparable changes, underscoring a wider continental trend.

    Scaleway’s selection adds to its growing momentum in Europe. Earlier this month, the European Commission awarded a 180 million euro ($210 million) cloud contract to a consortium that includes Scaleway, Post Telecom, OVHcloud and STACKIT, according to Reuters.

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    Under the new agreement, Scaleway will be responsible for safeguarding health records covering tens of millions of French citizens. The company was evaluated against more than 350 technical criteria, per Reuters, and the platform is expected to become operational between late 2026 and early 2027.

    France’s initial decision in 2019 to award the Health Data Hub contract to Microsoft Azure without a competitive tender sparked sustained criticism. According to Reuters, the country’s data protection authority declined to approve a permanent transfer of the full dataset, citing concerns about the extraterritorial reach of U.S. laws.

    These concerns were later reinforced by France’s national cybersecurity agency, which introduced the SecNumCloud certification framework. The rules impose strict conditions on hosting critical data, including requirements that prevent access through non-European legislation—effectively excluding U.S. providers and their subsidiaries, per Reuters.

    A law passed in 2024 further solidified this stance by mandating that sensitive data be hosted on infrastructure guaranteed to be sovereign, according to Reuters.

    Concerns over foreign legal access to European data were heightened last year during a French Senate inquiry. Under oath, Microsoft’s legal director acknowledged the company could not refuse a U.S. legal order seeking access to French citizens’ data, even if that data were stored within France, per Reuters.

    Source: Reuters