【AI前沿】The EU Is Going Through a Trump-Fueled Breakup With Big Tech

Matt BurgessVittoria ElliottSecurityMay 21, 2026 2:00 AMThe EU Is Going Through a Trump-Fueled Breakup With Big TechFrance is already moving on from Zoom and Microsoft Teams in favor of homegrown alternatives. Other countries are quickly following suit.The glass façade of the European Parliament building.Photograph: picture alliance/Getty ImagesCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyCommentLoaderSave StorySave this storyAs tensions betweenPresident Donald Trump and Europe continue to simmer, the continent is accelerating its moves toreduce its addiction to US technology. Cities and governments are ditching Microsoft Office for open-source alternatives, shifting toEuropean cloud hostingforlocal AI, and moving defense data to systems without Americaninvolvement. Nowhere has this been more clear than in France.Over the last few months, the French government has sped up its efforts to develop and deploy its own technology for government officials. The country has, arguably, emerged at the head of Europe’s growing digital sovereignty push, which aims to cut some reliance on US-based technology over concerns around data security, the Trump administration’s unpredictability, and changing prices. French budget minister David Amiel recentlycalledfor the state to “break free” from American systems and use those it can control.“We are not just explaining what we want to do,” Stéphanie Schaer, the head ofDINUM, France’s digital transformation ministry, tells WIRED over a call on the nation’s video-calling platform Visio. “We already did it in a few matters.” So far, more than 40,000 French government staff have started using the home-grown video platform, while the rest will move away from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others by 2027. “We are confident enough to use it every day and we are not dependent on just one actor that will tell us you have to use my video conference,” Schaer says.Across France’s central government agencies and vast civil service, officials plan to shift to as many French, European, and open source technology alternatives as possible in the coming years. Schaer says it is important for the French government to be in control of the technology that it is using, with data being stored locally in the country, not abroad.As part of this, DINUM has been developing a set of productivity tools, collectively called “LaSuite,” since at least 2023. As well as Visio, it includes instant messaging app Tchap, Messagerie instead of Gmail or Outlook, Fichiers for documents and file sharing, plus text editing softwareDocs, and Grist for spreadsheets. Some of the software is still in beta and has not been fully rolled out to French officials yet. However, Tchap already has 420,000 active users, Schaer says, with 20,000 civil servants adopting it each month.“We are based on open source software. So we don’t develop all the code,” Schaer says. There are public plans fornewfeatures, although code is published on Microsoft-ownedGithub. All data handled by the alternatives has to be processed in France and stored with providers who have approval from the country’s cybersecurity agencyANSSI. Earlier this month, the Dutch governmentmoved its open-source code off of GitHuband onto a Forgejo instance hosted on government-owned servers.While open source is key, the French government is also working with other countries and private firms on the development of its tools. “We can reuse what has been developed by the community and we contribute to this community,” Schaer says. For instance, Visio, which can host calls of up to 150 people and has AI transcription of calls, is built on technology from French firms Outscale and Pyannote.While Schaer’s department is aiming to lead by example, all of France’s central government agencies have to come up withplansto move away from US tech—across office software, antivirus, AI, databases, and more—by this fall. On April 23, French officials also announced the country will move its health data platform away from Microsoft to local cloud provider Scaleway, after a years-long decision process.Across Europe—as well as in Canada—politicians have been increasinglyvocalabout ditching US technology since the start of the second Trump administration. The Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, and Finland all haveongoing sovereignty efforts, withGerman officials and regionsalso prominently pushing the movement. In December, eight countries, including France and Germany, announced they wouldpartneron their efforts.“The one that’s probably moved fastest has indeed been France,” says Martha Bennett, a principal analyst at Forrester who has been tracking open source developments since the 90s. France has a strong history of software development and open source contributions, Bennet says, with the French national police forceadoptingGendBuntu, a customized version of the Ubuntu Linux distribution, on thousands of devices over the last two decades. “Where France has the advantage is that it’s a very cen