Why we are sponsoring the Brussels Sustainable IT Days
From 12 to 15 October 2026, the Brussels Sustainable IT Days will take place at Tour & Taxis. 5DAYS is proud to be one of the event’s sponsors. Organised by the Belgian Institute for Sustainable IT as a follow-up to the GreenTech Forum Brussels of 2024 and 2025, this new edition is dedicated to three topics we care about: digital resilience, sovereignty and Responsible AI.
Sovereignty is not a recent concern for us. It has shaped 5DAYS from the start, as we build an AI workspace that structures your company’s knowledge for European SMEs. Supporting an event that puts this question at the centre of the conversation felt natural.
Hosting in Europe is not the same as being sovereign
Over the years, we have arrived at two observations. The first is that hosting data in Europe is not the same as being sovereign. Storing data in a European data center means little if that data center is owned by a non-European company, and therefore exposed to non-European jurisdiction. The question is not only where the data sits, but who controls the layer underneath. This is the kind of criterion that guided our infrastructure choices, and it led us to providers such as Clever Cloud, which is one example among the European actors that make this approach possible.
Sovereign tools need bridges
The second observation is that the sovereign ecosystem is held back by a lack of bridges. Sovereign tools exist, but they rarely talk to each other. Small businesses end up drifting back towards the big platforms that integrate with everything, simply because the alternatives do not connect. We would rather help fix that than work around it, which is why connectors between sovereign solutions sit at the top of our roadmap. Tools like Tally and Nextcloud are the first we are working on, as illustrations of a wider ecosystem we want to see connect better.
Pragmatic, and transparent
We take a pragmatic approach to all of this. Our roadmap is built over several years, with clear priorities and full transparency about what is not yet sovereign. The encouraging part is that this is far easier today than it was ten years ago: European solutions are maturing quickly, and every new one makes the next step more achievable.
Four days at Tour & Taxis
The programme reflects this momentum. The conference day on Tuesday 13 October will cover digital sovereignty, European and open-source alternatives, cybersecurity and Responsible AI, among other topics. Workshops will run every day from 12 to 15 October in the exhibitors’ village, with practical methodologies and tools to bring back to your organisation.
We would be glad to meet you there and compare notes on what works, and what doesn’t, on the road to digital sovereignty. You can find the full programme and register on the Brussels Sustainable IT Days website.