The Dutch government has issued a complete prohibition on the proposed acquisition of Solvinity, a Dutch cloud provider, by American IT company Kyndryl, citing a possible “risk to the public interest.” The decision was announced in a letter published Monday, May 26, 2026, by Dutch minister for the digital economy Willemijn Aerdts.
Kyndryl had sought to acquire Solvinity for an undisclosed sum. At the center of the concern is DigiD, a Dutch government-managed platform hosted by Solvinity that allows residents of the Netherlands to verify their identity when accessing public services. The proposed deal raised fears that DigiD data could fall under foreign control and potentially be accessed by U.S. authorities.
Under U.S. law, government authorities — including law enforcement and intelligence agencies — can compel American companies to hand over data stored in overseas data centers, regardless of the host country’s data protection laws. While the Dutch government did not provide an explicit reason for blocking the deal, this legal reality appears central to the concerns surrounding it.
The decision comes as multiple European countries are working to reduce their dependence on U.S. technology companies, a trend that has accelerated amid what the source describes as increasingly unpredictable and retaliatory behavior from the Trump administration. Kyndryl told Politico, which first reported the story, that it was “extremely disappointed” by the ruling.
The block highlights the growing tension between European data sovereignty priorities and the reach of U.S. law over American-owned technology infrastructure. For Dutch residents, the outcome means DigiD — a service used to access government services — will remain under domestic control for now.
Source: TechCrunch