Europe Builds Its Own Digital Infrastructure to Cut US Tech Dependence

Europe's Digital Declaration of Independence

The European Union is making its most decisive moves yet to reduce dependence on American technology, driven by escalating geopolitical tensions and a growing awareness of digital vulnerability. France has announced plans to move 2.5 million civil servants away from US platforms including Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Webex by 2027, replacing them with Visio, a nationally developed video-conferencing solution.

France Leads with Visio

Visio was developed under the Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs and is hosted on SecNumCloud-certified infrastructure operated by Outscale, a subsidiary of Dassault Systemes. The platform has been in testing for a year with approximately 40,000 users and includes AI-powered meeting transcription built by French startup Pyannote. French civil service minister David Amiel said the aim is to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public communications through a sovereign tool, with estimated savings of up to one million euros annually per 100,000 users.

Brussels Tests Matrix Protocol

The European Commission has begun trialling a messaging system based on the open-source Matrix protocol as both a complement and potential backup to Microsoft Teams. Matrix is already used by the French government through its Tchap app, German healthcare bodies and armed forces via BwMessenger, and Luxembourg's government through Luxchat. The Commission is exploring Matrix as a common secure layer to connect EU institutions, with a working link to the European Parliament already established.

Momentum Across the Bloc

Germany's Schleswig-Holstein completed a landmark migration in October 2025, moving over 40,000 government mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange to open-source alternatives Open-Xchange and Thunderbird. The state is now planning to replace SharePoint with Nextcloud and Microsoft Office with LibreOffice by 2027. EU tech chief Henna Virkkunen is set to unveil a major tech sovereignty package in March 2026 covering cloud, AI, and semiconductors, while a European Parliament report notes the bloc relies on non-EU countries for over 80 percent of its digital products and services.