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What is the EU Data Boundary?

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Overview of the EU Data Boundary

The EU Data Boundary is a geographically defined boundary within which Microsoft has committed to store and process customer data for our major commercial enterprise online services, including Azure, Dynamics 365, Power Platform, and Microsoft 365, subject to limited circumstances where customer data will continue to be transferred outside the EU Data Boundary. This documentation provides details about those transfers. Specific services included in the EU Data Boundary are identified in the Product Terms as part of the services agreements. For convenience, services included in the EU Data Boundary are referred to in this document as EU Data Boundary Services.

As defined in our services agreements, Customer Data means all data, including all text, sound, video, or image files, and software, that are provided to Microsoft by, or on behalf of, Customer through use of the Online Service. Customer Data doesn't include Professional Services Data. For clarity, Customer Data doesn't include information used to configure resources in the Online Services, such as technical settings and resource names. In this transparency documentation, Customer Data and customer data may be used interchangeably.

Important

This EU Data Boundary documentation reflects the current state of the EU Data Boundary as of the date of publication. As noted in many cases in this article, we are continuing to deploy more services, service capabilities, and associated data within the EU Data Boundary and will update this documentation accordingly and note the last updated date. Last updated: December 14, 2022.

EU Data Boundary countries and datacenter locations

The EU Data Boundary consists of the countries in the European Union (EU) and the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). The EU Countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, and Sweden; and the EFTA countries are Liechtenstein, Iceland, Norway, and Switzerland.

The EU Data Boundary uses Microsoft datacenters announced or currently operating in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. In the future, Microsoft may establish datacenters in additional countries located in the EU or EFTA to provide EU Data Boundary services.

How to configure services for use in the EU Data Boundary

For all commercial cloud services in scope for the EU Data Boundary, customer data is stored and processed in datacenters located in countries in the EU or EFTA. In some cases, customers can select the EU deployment region directly; in others, the location is automatically assigned based on customer billing address or a customer decision to have their environment reside in the EU Data Boundary.

  • For Azure, regional resources that a customer deploys in an EU Data Boundary region will be in-scope for the EU Data Boundary. For more information, including details on which Azure regions are in the EU and EFTA, see Data Residency in Azure. For Azure non-regional services, see Configuring Azure non-regional services for the EU Data Boundary for details on how to configure each of these services to be in-scope for the EU Data Boundary.
  • For Dynamics 365 and Power Platform, the geographic area (Geo) in which a customer's services tenancy is hosted is determined by billing address. Customers can configure their services to be in-scope for the EU Data Boundary by provisioning their tenant and all Dynamics 365 and Power Platform environments in an EU Datacenter Location. For more information, see the availability deck and Create and manage environments in the Power Platform admin center.
  • For Microsoft 365, customers with a billing address in EU or EFTA countries will be in-scope for the EU Data Boundary, except a customer with a billing address in the EU or EFTA that has purchased the Microsoft 365 Multi-Geo Capabilities add-on enabling customers to expand Microsoft 365 presence to multiple geographic regions or countries isn't in scope for the EU Data Boundary. Customers can see which Geo hosts their services tenancy at any time by visiting their Microsoft 365 admin center. For more information, see Business subscriptions and billing documentation.