EU Summit Backs Data Controls; Microsoft Reveals 173 CLOUD Act Requests Pressuring Meta
European Union leaders convened the November 2025 Summit on European Digital Sovereignty, endorsing data controls as economic resilience cornerstone. U.S. CLOUD Act requests remained rare: Microsoft reported 173 H2 2024 enterprise disclosures yielding five non-U.S. handovers, and AWS noted zero H1 2025 data transfers, pressuring Meta on data localization.
1. EU Summit on Digital Sovereignty
In November 2025, European Union member states convened the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty and agreed that strengthened data controls would underpin economic resilience, social prosperity, competitiveness and security across the bloc. The declaration signals a move toward mandatory data localization requirements and heightened oversight of foreign technology providers.
2. U.S. CLOUD Act Requests Remain Limited
In the second half of 2024 Microsoft received 173 cross-border enterprise data requests under the CLOUD Act but provided non-U.S. customer data in only five cases. Amazon Web Services reported zero handovers of enterprise or government data stored outside the U.S. in the first half of 2025, underlining the current rarity of such enforcement.
3. Implications for Meta's Infrastructure Strategy
New digital sovereignty measures threaten Meta’s global data operations by potentially forcing the company to deploy EU-based data centers and localize user information. Meta may need to invest in regional infrastructure partnerships and revamp data routing and storage policies to comply with evolving European regulations.