France ditches Zoom and Teams as Europe seeks to cut digital ties to the U.S.

"Around Europe, governments and institutions are seeking to reduce their use of digital services from U.S. Big Tech companies and turning to domestic or free alternatives. The push for "digital sovereignty" is gaining attention as the Trump administration strikes an increasingly belligerent posture toward the continent, highlighted by recent tensions over Greenland that intensified fears that Silicon Valley giants could be compelled to cut off access."

"The objective is "to put an end to the use of non-European solutions, to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool," the announcement said. "We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors," David Amiel, a civil service minister, said in a press release."

European governments and institutions are moving away from U.S. Big Tech digital services toward domestic or free alternatives to enhance digital sovereignty and protect sensitive data. France plans to remove Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and GoTo Meeting for 2.5 million civil servants by 2027 and adopt Visio, a homegrown video service. Austria's military replaced Microsoft Office with open-source office software for report writing, and a German state bureaucracy has adopted free software for administrative tasks. Motivations include concerns about data privacy, geopolitical tensions that could disrupt access to foreign platforms, and worries about technological competitiveness with the United States and China.

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