Europe’s Tech Breakup with the US Isn’t Going Great
Microsoft, Amazon, Google
Europe has a dependency problem. We know this. Awareness is growing. I’ve written about this multiple times now.
Ninety-eight percent of German federal ministries have Microsoft Edge pre-installed. Edge, for crying out loud. Not even the good browsers.
Only 24% use a European search engine.
Ninety-seven percent of ministries are on Instagram.
So, we don’t have a software problem. We have an organizational problem.
The wake-up call
How awareness grew in the first place… Karim Khan.
Karim Khan is a judge at the International Criminal Court. He was investigating alleged war crimes in Gaza. The Trump administration sanctioned him.
Suddenly, he couldn’t access his Microsoft account. Emails gone. Work disrupted. Just like that.
Around the same time, the US government announced “freedom.gov,” a VPN designed to help Europeans specifically circumvent EU law, including the Digital Services Act. An allied government openly encouraging people to break allied law.
Also around the same time: US funding for Let’s Encrypt and the Tor network was cut.
Then, Finland ran a simulation.
What happens if the US flips a kill switch on critical digital services? The results were classified as far-reaching. Not encouraging.
For many Europeans, this was a very concrete demonstration of how dependency works when things get uncomfortable.
But how bad is it, really?
Pretty bad, it turns out.
Ecosia surveyed 147 German ministries and the numbers are hard to look at.
I mentioned it above: Microsoft Edge pre-installed: 98%. Using a European search engine: 24%. On Instagram: 97%. On Facebook: 77%. On Mastodon: 17%.
The German Bundestag runs over 10,000 workstations on Microsoft 365. And the three browser engines that matter globally don’t come from Europe, even though Firefox and Chrome are both open source and technically forkable.
Even when European alternatives exist, they often run on American infrastructure underneath, like the search engines that get their results from Google or Bing.
Dependency all the way down.
There’s no EU consensus either. The Baltic states, Latvia and Lithuania in particular, see US tech as a protective shield against Russia, not a risk. Pushing for digital sovereignty in Riga looks very different than it does in Paris.
Both perspectives are reasonable. That’s part of what makes this so slow.
France is doing something
France is moving. Not “planning to move” or “commissioning a report about moving.” Actually moving.
French officials can no longer use Microsoft Teams or Zoom. They’re on Visio, a domestic video conferencing tool built on open source, hosted in France, GDPR compliant.
By 2027, around 200,000 officials will have switched. Per 100,000 users, it saves roughly €1 million per year in licensing fees.
The French research center CNRS ended its Zoom contract entirely.
That’s what commitment looks like 2026.
Germany is having meetings about it
Something is also happening in Germany. But too little, honestly.
The Bundestag set up a commission to review its entire digital ecosystem. Office software, cloud, all of it. The strategy is set to be presented in May.
As a first concrete step: Wire, a European messaging app and the only chat tool certified by Germany’s BSI for classified information, is being introduced.
Cool.
But the Left Party is already pointing out that “Linux” doesn’t appear once in the strategy. MPs are still required to use Windows devices. I wrote about why this exit attempt might quietly fail , the pattern here fits exactly.
A commission reviewing software while everyone keeps using the same software. Classic.
OpenDesk is the one thing that’s working
OpenDesk is an open-source alternative to the online version of Microsoft Office, coordinated by ZenDiS, the Center for Digital Sovereignty, founded in late 2022 by the Federal Ministry specifically to reduce Microsoft dependency.
ZenDiS CEO Alexander Pockrandt reported around €8 million in turnover for 2024. Contracts signed for 160,000 users. By end of 2026, they’re aiming for at least double. Big inquiries coming from education, universities, and disaster management.
More interesting: OpenDesk is being used in the Federal Ministry for Digital Affairs with real users on real projects. Not test accounts. The Federal Chancellery uses components of it.
The Digital Minister recommended it to the Danish Digital Minister.
Mobile apps exist. A native email client exists. AI integration is in progress. The product works. The bureaucracy around it doesn’t really (yet).
The conference room
ZenDiS can’t let federal states join as shareholders.
A statute change is needed, something about rules against “mixed administration.” Several states are ready: Schleswig-Holstein, Thuringia, Bremen, Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg. All waiting. The federal government hasn’t delivered the change.
Since day one. Waiting since day one.
Private sector interest is there too. Banks and the health sector want sensitive data off hyperscaler platforms.
Technically, you agree with the customer quickly. It’s the contract negotiations and budget debates that slow everything down.
The bottleneck isn’t in the data center but the conference room.
Amazon’s “European” cloud
US hyperscalers are watching Europe. Amazon launched the “European Sovereign Cloud,” fully separate from regular AWS, operated only by EU-based employees.
But Amazon wants EU residency as the criterion. The BSI wants EU citizenship. Small distinction, large implications.
And at the end of it all, Amazon still owns the infrastructure. Still subject to the CLOUD Act. Still subject to a US executive order.
Critics already have a name for the interim Bundestag solution, where Microsoft services run through a cloud platform operated by SAP: “sovereignty washing.”
US corporation, US laws, European label.
Not sovereignty. Rebranding.
The Berlin Summit
The first European Digital Sovereignty Summit happened in Berlin in November 2025. Macron, Merz, digital ministers from 23 countries. Big room, important people, impressive charter.
Open-source providers were treated like vendors at a secondary trade fair. The charter signed by all EU states classified open source as potentially insecure and recommended supplementing it with “reliable proprietary technologies.”
ZenDiS, a company the government itself founded, was removed from the program. No representative allowed to speak on stage. The Digital Minister didn’t visit the open-source pavilion.
The downsides
The Baltic states aren’t wrong.
For countries on Russia’s border, US tech dependency and NATO protection aren’t easy to separate. Pushing for digital sovereignty looks different in Vilnius than it does in Paris.
Migration is brutal. Organizationally. Retraining staff who’ve used Outlook for 20 years, rebuilding workflows, surviving the resistance. France can move fast because it has strong centralized government.
Germany’s federalism makes coordinated change slower and messier. Other EU countries are making progress, but the map is uneven, and the momentum is fragile.
And the EU Commission’s planned spring legislative package on technological sovereignty is more framework than mandate. These things usually are.
OpenDesk is good, but 160,000 users is just a small start. Microsoft has millions of users in German public administration alone.
The Bottom Line
Last year, the German federal government paid nearly half a billion euros for Microsoft licenses. Over three years, it’s over a billion.
Imagine what could have been built with that money in open-source software. And the difference is open-source software belongs to everyone. It can’t be turned off by an executive order.
The technology exists. Nextcloud is mature. OpenDesk is in the Chancellery. France proved the switch is possible. The code is open, the tools are funded, the alternatives are good.
What’s missing is the willingness to have a rough quarter (or rather a few) during the transition.