European Banks Face Tough Cloud Tradeoffs

European banks are stuck in the middle of a fight between two friends who never got along. Of the 22 biggest banks on the continent surveyed by Bloomberg Businessweek, 22 said their primary cloud services provider is a U.S. technology company.

I'm no mathematician, but that's a high proportion of large European banks using American servers to store sensitive data, assess customer risk, crunch credit scores, and provide other financial services.

If Cosimo de' Medici time traveled to today, he'd also probably use Amazon Web Services. The EU wants to change that, so it's planning to invest billions in a European cloud counterweight to AWS, Microsoft's Azure, and smaller American providers.

• There are more regulatory measures on the way to bolster Europe's tech sector, shore up a single data market, and set AI rules of the road.

Bottom line: The EU wants more control over data, homegrown tech champions, and AI regulation. As its current banking situation shows, it’s got a long way to go.