Why now
AI wants all your data. The law wants you in control of it.
Two developments are coming together now: organisations want to use AI on all the business data they have collected, while European legislation sets ever more concrete requirements for who controls that data and how you can leave.
Five reasons to start now
AI on all your data
Organisations want AI agents that answer from their own knowledge: contracts, policy documents and tickets, but also the figures from ERP, data warehouses and other business software. Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) works best when structured and unstructured data come together in one place. A data lake is built for exactly that.
Your data in every question
With RAG, your own data is sent along with every question to the language model. When both the AI models and the underlying data run under European control, you keep control over your business knowledge when using AI too.
One source for analytics and AI
The same open lakehouse tables feed the dashboards, AI models and AI agents in your organisation. One source of truth for every application, and so one place to manage access, lineage and retention.
Procurement
Tenders increasingly ask where data lives, who operates it, and how you leave. An open platform gives you a credible answer, on paper and in code.
Real alternatives
Managed European data platforms and open-source alternatives are now mature enough to run serious analytics and AI workloads.
Legislation in play
- 15 August 2026Dutch Cybersecurity Act (NIS2) in force
Essential and important organisations must manage the risks in their supply chain, including those of their cloud and data platform providers.
- 12 January 2027Data Act: switching without charges
Cloud providers already have to enable switching, and from this date they may no longer charge switching or data egress fees for it. Switching gets easier and cheaper, especially when your data is in open formats.
- 2 December 2027AI Act: requirements for high-risk AI
Providers of high-risk AI, for example in HR, credit or public services, must demonstrably govern the origin and quality of their data. The Digital Omnibus moved this date from August 2026.
- Late 2027 (expected)Cloud and AI Development Act
Proposed by the European Commission in June 2026: one European framework with four sovereignty levels. Public bodies must decide per use case which level they need and buy accordingly.
A high-level overview, not legal advice. Status: October 2026.
What does this mean for your organisation?
In a sovereignty scan we map which legislation applies to you and what it asks of your data platform.