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Europe is done with American Big Tech. Well, sort of. Since the start of President Donald Trump’s chaotic second administration last year, concerned governments and companies across the continent have accelerated plans to end their near-total reliance on technology from US firms.
Alongside political declarations, home-grown European tech development, and millions in additional funding, a WIRED analysis has documented dozens of public instances of companies, governments, NGOs, and education establishments stepping away from US technology companies in favor of open source or local alternatives. It is likely the tip of the iceberg.
“The aggressive policies by the Trump administration, attacking international law, as well as the EU and democratic principles, has led to several wake-up calls,” says Marietje Schaake, a non-resident fellow at Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center and a former member of the European Parliament.
The moves are widespread—and growing. Last week, the European Commission launched its official long-term plans to rely less on US technology. The European Parliament has switched the default search engine on its devices from Google to the French alternative Qwant. Thousands of workers in the French government are using its own open-source office software—dubbed LaSuite—as officials aim to “break free” from dependence on American tech firms. An open-source documents offering from more than a dozen European tech companies, called Euro-Office, is due to launch imminently. Cities across the Netherlands, France, and Germany are all moving away from Microsoft Office and Google Docs
It’s not just productivity software, either. The Dutch government is moving its code away from Microsoft-owned Github to its own repository. In a series of decisions, Finland reportedly decided not to move its election data to Amazon’s cloud services, while the organization behind Belgium’s .be top-level domain has said it will move away from AWS. Meanwhile, Eurosky has been spun up as an interoperable alternative to Bluesky on the AT Protocol that underlies both social networks.
WIRED gathered the publicly known instances of European entities abandoning US-based Big Tech. (Click the arrows to scroll the timeline of instances below, or view them in this Google Sheet or a Proton Sheet).
While many of the “digital sovereignty” plans were in place before the start of Trump’s second term, often cited as urgently driving the change is the fallout from US sanctions against officials linked to the International Criminal Court. (The court itself ended up moving away from Microsoft’s technology).
The long list of Europe’s other concerns includes governments and companies not being in control of their own data; changing international relationships; dependence on tech from a small number of companies; potential access to data under the US CLOUD Act and FISA; and the closer-than-ever relationships between Big Tech firms and the Trump administration. “Citizens, companies, and organizations are energized to take their digital future into their own hands,” Schaake says. “Untangled from billionaire interests as well as Trump’s policies.”
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Despite the enthusiasm, entirely unpicking Europe’s connections to US technology is probably an impossible task. “US-based firms continue to dominate almost every layer of Europe’s digital stack,” one recent European Parliament report says. From cloud computing and artificial intelligence firms to cybersecurity and mobile operating systems, Europe—and much of the world—is deeply intertwined with US-based technology firms. The moves in Europe also risk inflaming already delicate relationships with officials in the Trump administration, who have criticized Europe’s strict digital technology laws.
However, despite this, the shift in Europe is underway. As a minister in the German state of Bavaria recently said: “We no longer have time to cheaply discuss the importance of digital sovereignty—given the geopolitical situation, we need to get from talking to doing.”
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Matt Burgess is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, privacy, and data regulation in Europe. He graduated from the University of Sheffield with a degree in journalism and now lives in London. Send tips to Matt_Burgess@wired.com. ... Read More
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