In November 2019, the German and French economic ministries announced the GAIA-X initiative to build a marketplace of data, cloud, and infrastructure services aligned to European norms and regulations. In June 2020, the initiative formally launched with the aim of demonstrating usable capability by H1 2021. CIOs of firms with operations in Europe should read this report to understand what GAIA-X is and how it could affect their use of the public cloud in Europe.