What is behind European efforts to ditch US software in favor of independent technology

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is less vocal about his worldview than Palantir’s Alex Karp. However, France is taking steps to reduce its reliance on Windows, while its domestic intelligence agency recently renewed its contract with an increasingly controversial data analytics company.

This puzzle represents a strange contrast between Europe and US technology. After the painful realization that it comes with strings attached, governments across the region are looking to rely less on American suppliers. But the measures taken so far are uneven and often reactive.

Cloud law has changed the equation

Another change Europe is reacting to since Trump’s first presidency. Enacted in 2018, the CLOUD Act forces US-based technology companies to comply with legal data requests even if the information is stored abroad. This means that even servers located on European soil are no longer a sufficient guarantee when important data is concerned.

Of all the data that governments live in, health data is arguably among the world’s most sensitive. However, the international reach of the CLOUD Act did not prevent the UK from obtaining agreements with the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Palantir regarding data from the National Health Service (NHS) during the pandemic. But if critics have their way, it could end up following France’s lead.

Last year, the French government announced that the Health Data Hub would leave Microsoft Azure in favor of a “private cloud.” The contract has now been awarded to Scaleway, a French cloud provider with a rapidly expanding network of data centers across Europe.

A subsidiary of the French group iliad, Scaleway is also one of the four providers that won a €180 million private cloud tender from the European Commission (about $211 million). AWS European Sovereign Cloud, launched by Amazon to address European issues, is not on the list. However, some are concerned that the US may still have a backdoor due to a single winner using S3NS, the “trusted cloud” shared between Thales and Google Cloud.

Some European approaches are still facing great difficulties

It wouldn’t be the first time that solutions as successful as Big Tech alternatives have faced problems stemming from their fundamental dependence. Qwant, for example, was once touted as the default search engine for civil servants in France while relying on Microsoft’s Bing – a partnership that soured when the French company accused the US giant of abusing its position. The guards concerned refused to take action, but Qwant had already made his own move.

Joining German non-profit Ecosia, Qwant launched Staan, a Europe-based and privacy-focused search index that can help search engines like theirs reduce their dependence on Google and Bing. But both partners still lag far behind their US rivals in terms of popularity and reach – even the much-loved Ecosia has only about 20 million users, not billions.

Holding onto market share is arguably the biggest challenge facing companies challenging US giants – but public contracts can empower them. For example, the European Commission’s tender will also benefit French cloud providers CleverCloud and OVHCloud, as well as STACKIT, which Lidl’s parent company Schwarz Group built for its own needs but is now trading.

The prospect of winning major contracts with European institutions could encourage other players to follow in the footsteps of the German retail heavyweight, or at least, hope. According to its developers, “an additional objective of the tender was to encourage the market to offer independent digital solutions that comply with EU rules and values.”

However, the Commission’s choice to avoid over-reliance on a single provider can be a double-edged sword. On the other hand, diversity can provide more stability and alleviate dependency concerns. On the other hand, it won’t be the best shortcut to promote Europe’s next billion dollar company.

To cynics and pragmatists, sovereign tech may look like a business interest – a way to ensure that the euros stay at home. But Europe’s isolation from US technology has not always translated into contracts for its implementation. For example, France releases Windows with a Linux operating system. Institutions in Austria, Denmark, Italy, and Germany are similarly looking to replace Microsoft’s suite of products with open source alternatives, such as LibreOffice.

This shift is sometimes accompanied by a “build, don’t buy” philosophy that has drawn criticism. France’s Court of Auditors has questioned spending on in-house tools like Visio, which is meant to replace Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The financial newspaper Les Échos also reported on the backlash expressed throughout the tech ecosystem, including this trivial question: “If the government doesn’t lead by example, how can you expect the big private companies to follow?”

Private consumers can decide the outcome

Actually, the big private companies haven’t followed much. German airline Lufthansa has chosen Elon Musk-backed Starlink for its wifi service. So is Air France, now a private airline but still partly controlled by the French and Dutch states – and there is a chance that French state-owned rail company SNCF could do the same.

Whether large companies choose alternatives to US suppliers depends largely on having technically compelling European options. In an interview with Poland, Musk said “there is no alternative to Starlink” – but European governments are out to prove him wrong. Public sentiment can also play a role, and it may not stop with many Europeans and officials leaving X.

Not being American is an advantage

After President Trump threatened to take control of Greenland, apps to boycott American products rose to the top of the Danish App Store – a sign that the demand to curb American technology is growing. Pressure on European governments to reconsider their contracts is also mounting, and Palantir’s latest mini-manifesto is unlikely to help its cause in the EU and UK.

Tech billionaires openly defending views that many Europeans do not share is a sign that the divorce is two-sided. When Meta chose to delay the EU launch of Threads over concerns about European legislation, it was also a reminder that the region is a second market for tech giants, and that they can afford to ignore it.

Conversely, this creates a market opportunity for solutions designed for Europe, its many languages, and cultural nuances. This alone should naturally stimulate demand in their home markets, with further development if the proponents of the EuroStack scheme manage to make it mandatory for the European public sector to purchase the property.

Europe may want to buy European, but there is also hope that “sovereign tech” will sell abroad. Mistral AI has reportedly seen its revenue increase to become one of OpenAI. Meanwhile, the governments of Canada and Germany are backing the merger of Cohere and Aleph Alpha to create a “transatlantic AI powerhouse” serving businesses and governments around the world. In 2026, not being American – or Chinese or Russian – is increasingly a selling point.