European national and local governments are trying to move away from US software for their operational work, in a push towards local or open-source alternatives, in fear that US President Donald Trump may force tech giants to cut access.
The more recent and most significant push is coming from France. President Emmanuel Macron has long advocated that European countries become more autarchic in their tech needs. His government announced that, from 2027, its civil service would no longer use any US-based video-conference tools, including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and GoTo Meeting, but would switch to the local system Visio.
Unveiling the decision, the Minister Delegate for Civil Service and State Reform, David Amiel, said, “We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors.”
The French decision is part of a broader shift by European governments at all levels to decouple from US tech giants. Denmark and the cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus are all considering moving to open-source software for their operations. Lyon, France, is already using free office software, as are several municipalities and regions across Italy. In Austria, the military is switching to LibreOffice, a German-based open-source office software that mimics most of the programmes from the Microsoft Office suite. Â
Even more encompassing, the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein has already moved its employees to an open-source email programme and to Nextcloud for file sharing, ditching Microsoft’s equivalents. In addition, it is considering switching to the Linux operating system and open-source software for telephone and video-conferencing systems.
All of these pushes are coming after rising fears about security and about the US’s increasingly aggressive stance on European affairs. One turning point was when the Trump administration sanctioned various International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutors after they issued a warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The ICC is based in the Netherlands. After the US sanctions, the judges affected had their credit cards cancelled, and the top prosecutor, Karim Ahmed Khan, even had his Microsoft email account cancelled. The event sparked fears of a possible “kill switch” from the US on essential services.
Trump’s aggressive behaviour over Greenland also fuelled European fears about dependency on US tech. In addition, the Trump administration has long been vocal in its support of US companies in their regulatory struggles with European and national authorities. Elon Musk had a very public fallout when the European Union confirmed fines against its social media X, backed by figures in the Trump administration. Reliance on his Starlink satellite internet service has also made European countries uneasy.
US companies, which in general consider Europe the second-largest market after the US, have been trying to find a compromise. For instance, US cloud providers are now setting up data centres in Europe, under European companies, with data accessible only to European Union citizens.
However, there is a sense of a changing tide, with European countries more willing to move away from dependence on US companies, also in an attempt to boost their tech sectors against US and Chinese competitors. Speaking with Associated Press about the surge in requests from the public sector, Italo Vignoli, spokesman for The Document Foundation, the non-profit behind LibreOffice, said: “At first, it was: we will save money and by the way, we will get freedom. Today it is: we will be free and by the way, we will also save some money.”
