Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince has threatened to shut down a swathe of the company’s Italian operations following a €14 million (£12.1m) fine from Italy’s communications watchdog, AGCOM, for allegedly flouting the country’s anti-piracy laws.

Writing on X, Prince warned that the tech giant was considering removing all of its servers from Italian cities, cancelling plans to build an Italian Cloudflare office, calling off any future investments, and discontinuing support for the 2026 Winter Olympics after being slapped with the “unjust fine”.

Announcing the penalty, the Italian regulator said that Cloudflare had failed to comply with its order to block access to certain pirated websites under Italy’s Anti‑Piracy Law, which included a requirement to stop those websites from loading by blocking their domains and cutting off traffic to IP addresses flagged by copyright holders through the country’s Piracy Shield system.

AGCOM said it had targeted Cloudflare as “a very large percentage” of the sites it looked to block use the company’s services.

The watchdog claims that after being notified of the order, Cloudflare did not implement the necessary protections to prevent its platform from hosting or enabling illegal material, resulting in a fine equal to 1% of the company’s global turnover. 

Hitting back, Prince called the original order “disgusting”, saying that the company already has multiple legal challenges pending against the Italian regulations.  

“The scheme, which even the EU has called concerning, required us within a mere 30 minutes of notification to fully censor from the Internet any sites a shadowy cabal of European media elites deemed against their interests,” said Prince.

“No judicial oversight. No due process. No appeal. No transparency. It required us to not just remove customers, but also censor our 1.1.1.1 DNS resolver, meaning it risked blacking out any site on the Internet. And it required us not just to censor the content in Italy but globally. 

“In other words, Italy insists a shadowy, European media cabal should be able to dictate what is and is not allowed online.”

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Prince said that he would soon arrive in Washington with intentions to discuss the fine with the Trump administration, which has already warned it might impose retaliatory fees or restrictions on European firms for what it views as “discriminatory and harassing lawsuits, taxes, fines, and directives” against US providers.

The situation raises yet more questions about the sovereignty of critical tech services across the EU and UK, which disproportionately rely on US firms. 

Recent research from Synergy Research Group shows that just three US companies, namely Google, Microsoft and Amazon, provide 70% of Europe’s cloud-computing infrastructure, while 88% of publicly listed companies in the UK depend on American tech firms for essential services.

The influential Open Rights Group recently pressed UK lawmakers to build a digital sovereignty strategy into the Cyber and Resilience Bill to curb Britain’s reliance on US tech firms, which may act as a safeguard against disruptions like those Italy might soon face.