European governments ditch US tech services over security fears

Across Europe, a quiet revolution is underway as governments and public institutions increasingly pivot away from US Big Tech services, embracing domestic or open-source digital alternatives. This strategic shift, driven by a burgeoning desire for "digital sovereignty", sees French civil servants preparing to abandon Zoom and Teams, Austrian soldiers adopting open-source office software, and German bureaucrats turning to free programs for their administrative tasks.

The movement is gaining significant traction amid heightened concerns over data privacy, fears of technological dependence, and a perceived belligerent posture from the Trump administration towards the continent. These anxieties have intensified fears that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access to critical services, highlighting Europe's vulnerability.

The French government underscored these concerns last week when it announced that 2.5 million civil servants would cease using video conferencing tools from US providers – including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and GoTo Meeting – by 2027. They will instead switch to Visio, a homegrown service. The objective, the announcement stated, is "to put an end to the use of non-European solutions, to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool."

David Amiel, a civil service minister, further elaborated in a press release: "We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors."

In response, Microsoft affirmed its commitment to "partner closely with the government in France and respect the importance of security, privacy, and digital trust for public institutions." The company added that it is "focused on providing customers with greater choice, stronger data protection, and resilient cloud services — ensuring data stays in Europe, under European law, with robust security and privacy protections." Zoom, Webex, and GoTo Meeting did not provide comments.

While French President Emmanuel Macron has championed digital sovereignty for years, Nick Reiners of the Eurasia Group notes a significant increase in "political momentum behind this idea now that we need to de-risk from U.S. tech." Reiners observed, "It feels kind of like there’s a real zeitgeist shift."

open image in gallery

This sentiment was a prominent topic at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month, where Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission's official for tech sovereignty, warned that Europe's reliance on external providers "can be weaponized against us." She stressed, "That’s why it’s so important that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to very critical fields of our economy or society," without naming specific nations or corporations.

A pivotal moment occurred last year when the Trump administration sanctioned the International Criminal Court's top prosecutor, following the tribunal's issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an ally of President Donald Trump. These sanctions led Microsoft to cancel the ICC official's email, a move first reported by The Associated Press, which ignited fears of a "kill switch" that Big Tech companies could wield to arbitrarily suspend services.

Microsoft maintains it kept in touch with the ICC "throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services. At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC." Microsoft President Brad Smith has consistently sought to bolster trans-Atlantic ties, with his press office highlighting a recent CNN interview in Davos where he warned that a rift over Greenland could impact jobs, trade, investment, and security. "Europe is the American tech sector’s biggest market after the United States itself. It all depends on trust. Trust requires dialogue," Smith stated.

Other incidents have fuelled the movement, including a growing perception that repeated EU efforts to curb tech giants like Google with antitrust fines and sweeping digital regulations have done little to diminish their dominance. Concerns about relying on billionaire Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system for communications in Ukraine have also emerged.

The revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden regarding US cyber-snooping triggered years of wrangling between Washington and Brussels over data transfer agreements. With online services predominantly hosted in cloud data centres, Europeans fear their data remains vulnerable. In response, US cloud providers have established "sovereign cloud" operations, with data centres located in European countries, owned by European entities, and with physical and remote access restricted to EU resident staff. The aim, as Reiners explains, is that "only Europeans can take decisions so that they can’t be coerced by the U.S."

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein last year migrated 44,000 employee inboxes from Microsoft to an open-source email programme. It also switched from Microsoft's SharePoint file-sharing system to Nextcloud, an open-source platform, and is even considering replacing Windows with Linux, and proprietary telephones and videoconferencing systems with open-source alternatives. Digitalisation Minister Dirk Schrödter declared in October, "We want to become independent of large tech companies and ensure digital sovereignty."

open image in gallery

Similarly, the French city of Lyon announced last year its deployment of free office software to replace Microsoft products. Denmark’s government and the cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus have also been trialling open-source software. Digital Minister Caroline Stage Olsen wrote on LinkedIn last year, "We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely. Too much public digital infrastructure is currently tied up with very few foreign suppliers."

The Austrian military has also transitioned to LibreOffice, a software package offering word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations, mirroring Microsoft 365's Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The Document Foundation, a German non-profit behind LibreOffice, noted that the military's switch "reflects a growing demand for independence from single vendors." Reports also indicated the military's concern over Microsoft's move to online cloud file storage, whereas the standard version of LibreOffice is not cloud-based.

Italo Vignoli, a spokesman for The Document Foundation, recalled that some Italian cities and regions adopted the software years ago, initially driven by the appeal of avoiding software license fees. Now, the primary motivation has shifted to avoiding vendor lock-in. "At first, it was: we will save money and by the way, we will get freedom," Vignoli said. "Today it is: we will be free and by the way, we will also save some money."