The open source Platform Mesh project, part of the EU initiative IPCEI-CIS, is a framework for a multi-provider cloud-edge continuum that should span the European continent. Some of the central questions the project wants to answer are: How can the different service offerings across a wide array of providers be unified? How can they communicate in a common language?

We discuss how a combination of Cloud Native building blocks that emerged from the Kubernetes ecosystem (kcp and kube-bind, among others) could be used to create the foundation for the next generation of cloud platforms.

We demonstrate a prototype which meshes together declarative APIs that allows us to consume services across multiple control plane instances, instantiating what we call the “Platform Mesh”. As an outlook, we connect the development of declarative APIs to ongoing European developments coming from the upcoming regulations on switching data processing services from within the Data Act, and possible future legislation fostering interoperability in the cloud native computing landscape.

This talk is a call for action for how to build the next level of European platforms, addressing key European Union objectives in cloud computing sovereignty and standardization.

We will conclude by discussing how this reference architecture aligns with broader EU initiatives in technological sovereignty and cross-border digital service integration

Links - https://www.kcp.io/ (framework behind platform mesh) - https://apeirora.eu/ (project initiative) - https://www.ecofed.eu/ (collaborators)