European Commission Releases Plan to Reduce Dependence on US Tech Companies

The European Commission last week released 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 the open-source office software LaSuite.

French government 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 moving away from Microsoft Office and Google Docs.

The Dutch government is moving its code away from Microsoft-owned GitHub to its own repository. Finland decided not to move its election data to Amazon’s cloud services. be top-level domain has said it will move away from AWS.

Eurosky has been spun up as an interoperable alternative to Bluesky on the AT Protocol. The International Criminal Court moved away from Microsoft’s technology. WIRED gathered the publicly known instances of European entities abandoning US-based Big Tech and created a timeline.

Marietje Schaake said 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. Schaake added that citizens, companies, and organizations are energized to take their digital future into their own hands, untangled from billionaire interests as well as Trump’s policies.

A recent European Parliament report says US-based firms continue to dominate almost every layer of Europe’s digital stack.