As of the event date, February 3, 2026, France was preparing to replace several US video-conferencing services across its public administration, part of a wider European effort to reduce dependence on a small group of foreign technology suppliers.
The French government said 2.5 million civil servants would move by 2027 from services including Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Webex and GoTo Meeting to Visio, a system developed in France. Officials presented the change as a security and confidentiality measure intended to keep sensitive public communications under European control. President Emmanuel Macron had promoted greater technological autonomy for years, but geopolitical tensions, privacy concerns and Europe’s competitive position had given the policy fresh urgency.
France was not acting alone. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein moved 44,000 employee email accounts from Microsoft software to an open-source program in 2025. It also replaced Microsoft SharePoint with Nextcloud and was considering open-source options for operating systems, telephony and video calls. Lyon announced plans to deploy free office software, while Denmark’s national government and the cities of Copenhagen and Aarhus were testing similar alternatives. Austria’s military adopted LibreOffice in place of Microsoft Office for tasks including reports, spreadsheets and presentations.
The movement is often described as a drive for digital sovereignty: the ability to operate important systems without being exposed to decisions by a single overseas company or government. European officials have also questioned whether antitrust penalties and new digital regulations have substantially weakened the market power of the biggest technology groups. Dependence on Elon Musk’s Starlink for communications in Ukraine has added another strategic concern.
A dispute involving the International Criminal Court sharpened fears about service continuity. After the United States sanctioned the court’s chief prosecutor, Microsoft disconnected his ICC email account. Microsoft said it remained in contact with the court throughout the process and did not suspend services to the institution itself. The episode nonetheless showed European policymakers how sanctions imposed elsewhere could affect access to essential commercial platforms.
US providers have responded to sovereignty demands by offering cloud arrangements designed to keep data in Europe, use European-owned entities and restrict physical and remote access to EU-based personnel. Microsoft said it continued to work with the French government and was expanding customer choice, data safeguards and resilient European cloud services governed by European law. Zoom, Webex and GoTo Meeting did not provide comments to the Associated Press.
The emerging European approach does not amount to a continent-wide ban on US software. Instead, the public-sector projects are practical tests of whether domestic and open-source tools can meet operational needs while giving governments more control over data, infrastructure and the risk of external disruption.
