Cyprus parliamentary committee demands urgent national AI and cloud strategy

On Tuesday, members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee in Cyprus called for the immediate completion of the National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Computing to safeguard the state’s critical data. Committee chairman Giorgos Karoullas, a DISY parliament member, emphasized that the issue is a primary national security concern for Cyprus due to the country’s ongoing occupation, exposure to hybrid threats, and strategic geographical location.

During the session, data was presented indicating that three cloud and data storage providers from non-EU countries control over 70% of the European market, with more than 80% of digital infrastructure relying on external providers. To address this, the committee urged the government to support the European Commission's proposal while lobbying the EU for three specific guarantees: prioritized energy interconnections, sustainable European funding for the high costs of data center acquisition, and equal treatment for smaller member states. The committee also requested that the final strategy document be published in both Greek and English to ensure full transparency and national compliance.