Since the start of President Donald Trump’s second administration, a quiet but accelerating migration has been underway across Europe. Governments, cities, and public institutions are systematically replacing American software, cloud infrastructure, and hardware with domestic and open-source alternatives. It is not a single policy or protest vote. It is a growing recognition across the continent that dependence on US technology carries a geopolitical risk that is no longer theoretical.
The move has been documented by outlets including WIRED (June 8), Politico (April 20), and Euronews (January 27), with the most aggressive action coming from France, Germany, and Denmark.
France leads with the most aggressive timeline
France has mandated that 2.5 million civil servants stop using Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and GoTo Meeting by 2027, replacing them with Visio, a homegrown sovereign video platform built as part of the Suite Numerique plan. President Macron has also directed state agencies to phase out Microsoft 365 by 2028 in favor of open-source alternatives. The French cybersecurity agency ANSSI has flagged Microsoft Copilot AI as a potential security risk over its reliance on US-based training data (Euronews).
The cost calculus is striking. Visio is projected to save roughly 1 million euros per year per 100,000 users compared to the US platforms it replaces.
Germany’s pioneering state-level example
Schleswig-Holstein, the northern German state, is the most concrete example of a full transition already in motion. The state cabinet approved the switch from Microsoft to open-source software in April 2024. Since then, 40,000 mailboxes and 110 million emails and calendar entries have been migrated from Outlook to Open-Xchange. About 30,000 government workstations — used by civil servants, police, and judges — are migrating from Windows to Linux and from Microsoft Office to LibreOffice, with completion targeted by 2028 (ZDNET, June 2025).
The state’s telephone infrastructure is also switching to open-source before summer 2026, and data is moving from Microsoft Azure to European cloud providers. So far, Schleswig-Holstein has saved 15 million euros in licensing costs after an initial 9 million euro investment.
“We’re done with Teams,” Digital Minister Dirk Schrodter announced via an open-source video platform (Politico).
Denmark, the Netherlands, and the EU itself
Denmark announced in June 2025 that it would move 15,000 government workers off Microsoft by the end of 2026, with a four-year strategy for full transition to LibreOffice and Linux. The stated catalyst: when ICC prosecutor Karim Khan lost access to his Microsoft account after US sanctions were applied, the risk of a remote “kill switch” on sovereign infrastructure became undeniable (ZDNET).
In the Netherlands, the Dutch parliament passed eight motions in March 2025 urging the government to end dependence on US software (Reuters). Amsterdam’s former Deputy Mayor Alexander Scholtes launched a multiyear program targeting 30% European cloud services by 2030 and all sensitive data on European or Dutch infrastructure by 2035. His reasoning: “We would have a huge problem if Microsoft stopped its services.”
At the EU level, the European Parliament replaced Google with the French search engine Qwant as the default on all in-house computers on June 4 (Medianama). The EU’s Data Act already requires sensitive government data to be stored on servers within the bloc. A new European Technological Sovereignty Package, announced in June 2026, marks the most decisive regulatory inflection point yet in what analysts now call “cloud geopolitics.”
The scope of the shift
The scale of dependence being unwound is enormous. US technology providers — AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud — supply roughly 70% of cloud services in Europe, according to a European Parliament study. About 80% of European corporate enterprise software spending goes to US vendors. Even a partial shift represents hundreds of billions of euros in market reallocation.
The trends are already measurable. Google Cloud’s EU market share fell from 22% in 2023 to 15% in the first quarter of 2026. Microsoft Azure’s growth in Europe slowed to 2% year-over-year in 2025. Scaleway, the French cloud provider, grew revenue by 45% in the same period, driven primarily by government contracts. Nextcloud, the German open-source file-sharing platform, reported tripling in leads and gaining 2 million new professional users after Trump’s inauguration.
A survey by SWG and Polling Europe found that 86% of Europeans think a sudden US move to restrict digital services is plausible, and 59% say it is already a real and concrete risk.
The Huawei paradox
There is a revealing tension in Europe’s approach. While the EU formally banned Huawei from 5G networks in June 2026 — accelerating adoption of Ericsson and Nokia — the alternative infrastructure being built is not necessarily European-owned either. Chinese alternatives are scrutinized just as heavily. The EU Critical Raw Materials Act requires semiconductor supply chains to avoid both US-controlled and Chinese foundries unless strategic exceptions apply. The real ambition, visible across these actions, is not simply to replace one foreign provider with another but to build the capacity for digital sovereignty on European terms.
That will take time and money. A leaked EU internal report estimates that the 5G overhaul alone will cost 50 billion euros by 2030, partly funded by a 750 billion euro digital sovereignty fund. The chip self-sufficiency target is 2030. Amsterdam’s full data sovereignty target is 2035.
The direction, however, is unmistakable. One country at a time, one ministry at a time, Europe is unwinding a dependency that was built over two decades and asking whether the price of convenience was always going to be control.