Everyone is selling sovereign cloud. Almost no one is delivering it.

The word "sovereignty" is everywhere in European tech policy right now. It appears in Commission proposals, in procurement frameworks, in the names of cloud products that may or may not deserve the label. It has become, like many words that matter, a word that is starting to lose its meaning. That tension sat at the heart of this week's European Internet Forum lunch debate at the European Parliament in Brussels, where policymakers and industry gathered to discuss what the Commission's CAIDA proposal needs to succeed.

Advania was invited to contribute. Henric Skalberg, Head of Cyber Security and Compliance, took the floor as First Respondent alongside speakers from the European Commission, Thales, CISPE and the ITI Council. His argument was grounded in something most of the policy debate lacks: a decade of actually doing it.