How the Sovereignty Score works

Evidence dimensions

We assess a service across dimensions such as ownership, governing law, legal HQ, data location, suppliers, technical portability, security, licence, and deposit guarantee. Each dimension records a finding, the region it points to (EU / EEA, EFTA / UK, EU candidate / DCFTA, Non-European), and a confidence.

Verified vs. claimed

Confidence is the heart of the method. Verified means a primary source, a public register or regulator, backs the claim. Claimed means the service self-declares it, for example in a privacy policy. Unknown means we could not establish it. Claimed evidence counts for 70% of verified; unknown evidence counts for nothing and is shown plainly. We never present a self-declared fact as verified.

Axis one: Jurisdiction

The Jurisdiction axis asks which law a service answers to: legal HQ, governing law, and for banking the licence and deposit guarantee. It uses a strict lens: EU/EEA evidence counts fully, EFTA and UK evidence at 60%, EU-candidate evidence at 30%, and non-European evidence not at all.

Axis two: Independence

The Independence axis asks whether the service runs free of non-European giants. It blends three components: Control (ownership, 40%), Operational (data location, operations, suppliers, 35%), and Openness (technical portability, 25%). Its lens is Europe-inclusive: EFTA and UK evidence counts at 90%. A Swiss provider can score high on Independence while the strict Jurisdiction lens discounts its seat; showing both axes is the point.

Where a service is subject to foreign compelled-access law, the Control component is multiplied by 0.5.

The Sovereignty Score

The headline number blends the two axes: 60% Jurisdiction + 40% Independence. A separate Trust reading (security, sustainability) is tracked and displayed but deliberately not blended into the score. The green / amber / grey tier is a glance indicator of the score and of how much of the profile is evidenced; grey means insufficient proven evidence, not a bad service.

Unrated is not zero

If either axis has no proven evidence, the service is Unrated and shows a dash. A zero would be indistinguishable from a worst-case verdict, so we refuse to print one. We would rather show no number than an unearned one. The dossier says which axis is missing and the evidence table shows exactly what is not yet established.

FIE-SEAL assurance

FIE-SEAL (0 to 4) is a separate assurance ladder driven by the core dimensions: ownership, governing law, and legal HQ (or licence, for banking). It caps low when those are only claimed.

• SEAL-0 · No assurance. No verified European anchor.
• SEAL-1 · Claimed only. European anchor claimed, not yet verified.
• SEAL-2 · Anchored, with dependency. Verified European anchor with a material non-European dependency.
• SEAL-3 · High assurance. Verified European anchor and operations.
• SEAL-4 · Full assurance. Fully verified, all core evidence EU/EEA.

What we cannot verify

Some things are not publicly verifiable: beneficial ownership beyond company registers, physical data residency, and the licence behind a banking-as-a-service neobank. We mark these claimed or unknown rather than guess, and the score reflects that honesty.

Weights, in full

Every number on this page is rendered from the published model configuration (v2.1.0) at build time, so this page cannot drift from the algorithm. Per-category dimension weights:

tech-digital (v2.0.0): Jurisdiction: HOME 15, LAW 15 · Independence · Control: OWN 20 · Independence · Operational: DATA 20, OPS 10, SUP 10 · Independence · Openness: TECH 15 · Trust (informational): SEC 10, ENV 5

cloud-hosting (v2.0.0): Jurisdiction: HOME 10, LAW 15 · Independence · Control: OWN 15 · Independence · Operational: DATA 20, OPS 10, SUP 20 · Independence · Openness: TECH 10 · Trust (informational): ENV 10

banking-payments (v2.1.0): Jurisdiction: HOME 10, LAW 10, LIC 30, DGS 20 · Independence · Control: OWN 20 · Independence · Operational: DATA 15, SUP 10 · Trust (informational): SEC 5