Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier

Netherlands blocks US takeover of vital digital supplier
politico.eu

The entire country has been clamouring for this for weeks, and the government has been completely silent about it. A couple of weeks ago, the entire parliament (with only a single party dissenting) voted for a motion to end the contract with Solvinity, but the government extended it anyway, leaving blocking the takeover as the only option, and there wasn't a lot of confidence that the government would do that.

The whole reason for this is that Solvinity host DigiD, the Dutch e-ID system that handles authentication to all government and many other sensitive systems (healthcare). With the US law that the US government should be able to get access to any data held by a US company, regardless of where it's hosted, this system clearly should be kept out of American hands.

Of course there's still plenty of sensitive data in the hands of Microsoft, Amazon and other US companies. No idea when they're going to do something about that.

Given what we know now, this seems perfectly logical. It's just that we don't know what else is going on behind the scenes.

I'm sure there was some negotiations on how to keep the data separate or something, with the threat of blocking it altogether as a final solution.

But agreed, this is a good outcome

The Netherlands blocking a US acquisition due to technology control concerns is sure to ruffle some feathers in Washington.