AWS plans to temporarily disconnect its European Sovereign Cloud from the company’s global network backbone on October 24, running an exercise meant to show the environment can operate without infrastructure outside the European Union. The test will run for several hours, and AWS says service availability within the sovereign cloud, other AWS regions and private Direct Connect links will stay unaffected.
Customers may notice brief connectivity hiccups as traffic shifts to an alternative route at the start and end of the test, since external networks need time to update their routing information. AWS will not disconnect the sovereign cloud from the internet entirely.
Instead, dedicated connectivity from European internet service providers will keep workloads reachable while the private backbone sits offline, with traffic that normally travels that backbone rerouted over the public internet for the duration.
AWS will also disable a separate global system used for limited transfers of operational data tied to the sovereign cloud, including vetted source-code mirroring and software updates. The company said customer content and customer-created metadata are never part of those transfers, and that its EU-based team controls them.
An operations team made up entirely of EU residents working within the EU will run the exercise, using hardware and software already available inside the sovereign cloud. AWS plans to share results with customers and regulators once the test concludes.
The move addresses just one layer of what the European Commission considers cloud sovereignty. Its framework separates data location from operational control across eight categories, using graduated assurance levels that run from basic data residency up to full independence from non-EU ownership, personnel and supply chains. AWS’s October test targets operational independence specifically, not the broader questions of company ownership or jurisdiction that the EU’s proposed Cloud and AI Development Act also considers.
AWS made the European Sovereign Cloud generally available in January 2026, anchored by a first region in Brandenburg, Germany. The environment runs as its own separate AWS partition, with distinct identity management, billing and console systems that cannot be accessed using standard AWS credentials. AWS said the test aligns with objectives from both the European Commission’s sovereignty framework and Germany’s BSI C3A framework, and that it expects the results to offer regulators and customers further technical evidence of the platform’s independence.
