Eastern Europe has 11 EU member countries: Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovak Republic, and Slovenia. Western Europe has seven countries that are not in the EU: Andorra, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, San Marino, Switzerland, and the UK. Eastern Europe has 10 countries that are not in the EU: Albania, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Russia, Serbia, and Ukraine.

Europe-5 Retail And E-Commerce Sales Will See Steady Growth The Europe-5 group comprises the top five economies in Europe — in descending order of size, these are Germany, the UK, France, Italy, and Spain. Forrester expects total retail sales, in-store sales, and e-commerce sales in these countries to rise steadily in line with long-term historical growth rates.

In 2025, AWS created a new European Sovereign Cloud (ESC) service with no critical dependencies on non-EU infrastructure, with an obligation for staff, tech, and leadership to be based in Europe. Google and Microsoft provide functionality to control where data is stored and processed. Microsoft promises to increase European data center capacity by 40%; place controls on where data is stored, processed, encrypted, and secured; and limit European access rights.

In 2026, new markets are the top planned growth lever globally (31%), with 34% of European respondents citing new markets compared to 30% of North American and APAC respondents. But Europe is far from uniform. Germany shows the strongest expansion bias (47%), while Spain is far more cautious (22%), signaling uneven appetite and capacity for market entry. These splits argue against a single “EU growth plan.”

Workforce impact is already material, particularly outside Europe. Despite intentions to preserve roles, the workforce is already changing. Nearly half of European marketers (46%) say they’ve reduced headcount or replaced marketing employees with AI, compared with 59% of non-European marketers, indicating faster, more decisive action outside Europe. In addition, 54% of European respondents believe that AI will eliminate some marketing functions and roles, versus 64% among non-European peers.

Figure 1 Latest Cloud Trends In Europe The European cloud landscape is undergoing a rapid transformation, driven by a convergence of regulatory pressure, geopolitical uncertainty, and evolving enterprise priorities. New EU initiatives — such as the Important Project of Common European Interest on Next Generation Cloud Infrastructure and Services — and national mandates in countries like Germany, France, and Italy are reshaping the market around digital sovereignty and improved cybersecurity.

Business Buyers In Europe Balance Bureaucracy With Nimbleness

While 85% of European B2B AI decision-makers report progress to experimentation (23%) or production (62%) phases of genAI use, they lag slightly behind non-European peers, with 72% reporting being in the production phase, according to Forrester’s State Of AI Survey, 2025. This may be due to stricter regulatory frameworks like GDPR and the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, which add compliance complexity.

While the EU attempts to simplify some legislation — and as the UK drifts both further away on AI and closer on security and defense to EU alignment — firms will face continued legislative impacts from acts like the European Green Deal and the rollout of the EU AI act to prohibited and high-risk use cases. Here’s what European business, technology, and marketing leaders should expect in 2026: Consumer daily use of genAI will double, but enterprise adoption will lag the US.

Figure 8 Faith In Public Sector Institutions To Govern AI Is Minimal Although most Europeans welcome AI regulation, few actually trust public sector institutions to manage the risks associated with AI (see Figure 9). Trust doesn’t vary much between these entities: It skews slightly higher in the EU and sector-specific regulators, and lower in national and regional governments and industry bodies like workers’ unions.