The Bottom Line: Consent management is a critical point of digital sovereignty: the CLOUD Act can enable US authorities to access European consent data regardless of storage location.
While the debate on digital sovereignty focuses on cloud and AI, consent management decides daily over the control of European user data. Whoever chooses these platforms bears legal risk – particularly when the provider is subject to US jurisdiction.
A Bitkom survey shows that 93 percent of respondents in Germany criticise digital dependence on foreign countries, 99 percent wish for greater digital sovereignty. So far, the debate has focused on cloud infrastructure, AI and semiconductors. Consent management has been neglected – those systems that control and document data flows on websites.
A consent management platform captures for each visitor the time and subject of every consent and serves as proof of approval. Decisive is this: if the provider is subject to US jurisdiction, the CLOUD Act can apply and US authorities can under certain conditions enable access to the data – even if it is stored on European servers. Not the storage location alone, but the jurisdiction of the provider determines the legal exposure.
The legal situation for data transfers to the USA has been fragile for years. The European Court of Justice struck down Safe Harbour in 2015 and Privacy Shield in 2020. The successor, the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, is currently under judicial review (Case C-703/25 P); a decision is expected no earlier than the end of 2026. Should this framework also be found unlawful, it would be the third failed basis for data transfers in ten years. Companies that manage consents through US platforms bear this risk independently.
When selecting a consent platform, data protection and marketing officers should examine three points: (1) Where are the data stored and in which data centre? (2) Who can access the data – even if the provider belongs to or is controlled by a US corporation? (3) What guarantees on data access, transfer and responsibilities are recorded in writing in the contract? European platforms support the same standards as international providers: IAB Transparency & Consent Framework (TCF), Google Consent Mode v2 or server-side tagging. A switch is in practice often less effort than the 55 percent of respondents suspect, who consider it complicated.
Source: www.it-daily.net · Published 31 July 2026
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