What is data sovereignty?

Data sovereignty refers to laws requiring that data generated in a country must be stored and processed within that country's borders. The EU's GDPR is the most prominent example, restricting transfers of personal data outside the European Economic Area without adequate safeguards. Other strict regimes include China's Cybersecurity Law, Russia's Federal Law No. 242-FZ, and India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act. For data centre operators, sovereignty requirements drive demand for in-country facilities even in markets that would otherwise lack scale justification. This has accelerated data centre construction in secondary European markets (Warsaw, Milan, Madrid) and emerging regions (Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Brazil) where local data residency is now legally mandated.