France leads EU exodus from US tech amid sovereignty fears
With over 40,000 staff already on domestic platforms, France is setting the pace for a broader European shift away from Microsoft and Zoom, citing data security and geopolitical unpredictability.
European governments are rapidly dismantling their reliance on American technology providers, driven by concerns over data security and the unpredictability of US political leadership. France has emerged as the vanguard of this digital sovereignty push, with its digital transformation ministry (DINUM) reporting that more than 40,000 government staff have adopted the home-grown video platform Visio. The nation has set a firm target to fully migrate away from US-based video conferencing tools, including Zoom and Microsoft Teams, by 2027.
The shift is not merely symbolic but operational. French Budget Minister David Amiel has publicly called for the state to “break free” from American systems, while Stéphanie Schaer, head of DINUM, confirmed that the ministry is already executing these plans. The government’s productivity suite, known as “LaSuite,” includes Visio for video, Tchap for messaging, and various open-source tools for email, file sharing, and spreadsheets. Tchap alone has reached 420,000 active users, growing by 20,000 new civil servant adopters each month.
Data residency remains a core tenet of this strategy. All data handled by these alternatives must be processed within France and stored with providers approved by the national cybersecurity agency, ANSSI. This requirement stems from concerns over extraterritorial laws such as the US Cloud Act, which allows American law enforcement to request access to data stored on servers internationally. DINUM has explicitly stated that such access is unacceptable, reinforcing the need for local control over critical infrastructure.
Other European nations are following suit, albeit at varying speeds. The Dutch government has moved its open-source code repositories from GitHub to a government-hosted Forgejo instance, while the International Criminal Court announced plans to migrate from Microsoft to the European open-source alternative OpenDesk. The city of Lyon has already moved approximately 70 percent of its employees from Microsoft Office to the open-source OnlyOffice, with plans to eventually adopt Linux as the operating system.
Despite the momentum, the transition faces structural hurdles. A recent European Parliament report noted that US firms dominate major software layers, with Google, Microsoft, and Amazon controlling about 70 percent of the EU cloud market. Furthermore, the ICC’s decision to leave Microsoft was partly triggered by the freezing of its chief prosecutor’s email accounts following US sanctions, a stark reminder of the leverage US tech companies hold. As European entities seek strategic autonomy, the focus is shifting toward collaborative development of open-source tools, such as the ongoing work between French and German teams on the BlockNote text editor.
