Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella talks much less about his worldview than Palantir’s Alex Karp. And yet France is taking steps to reduce your dependence on Windowswhile its national intelligence agency recently renewed his contract with the increasingly controversial data analytics company.
This paradox is representative of Europe’s messy break with American technology. After painfully realizing that this comes with strings attached, governments across the region are seeking to rely less on US suppliers. But the measures taken so far have been uneven and often reactive.
The CLOUD Act changed the equation
One change Europe is reacting to dates back to Trump’s first presidency. Promulgated in 2018, the CLOUD Law forces US-based technology companies to comply with data requests from authorities even if the information is stored abroad. This means that even servers located on European soil are no longer sufficient security when it comes to critical data.
Of all the information governments rely on, health data is arguably among the most sensitive. Still, the extraterritorial reach of the CLOUD Act did not stop the United Kingdom to close agreements with companies such as Google, Microsoft and Palantir around their National Health Service (NHS) data during the pandemic. But if critics have their way, it may end up following France’s example.
A year ago, the French government announced that your Health Data Hub would leave Microsoft Azure in favor of a “sovereign cloud”. This contract has now been awarded to Scalewaya French cloud provider with a rapidly expanding network of data centers across Europe.
Scaleway, a subsidiary of the French group Iliad, was also one of the four suppliers that won a sovereign cloud tender worth 180 million euros from the European Commission (approximately $211 million). AWS European Sovereign Cloud, which Amazon launched to address Europe’s concernsis not on the list. However, some are concerned that the U.S. can still have a back door because a winner used S3NSa “trusted cloud” joint venture between Thales and Google Cloud.
European alternatives still face great difficulties
It wouldn’t be the first time that solutions championed as alternatives to Big Tech face problems caused by their underlying dependencies. Qwan, for example, It was once recommended as the default search engine for public servers. in France while relying on Microsoft’s Bing, a association That got ugly when the French company accused the American giant of abusing its position. The relevant supervisory body refused take action, but Qwant had already made his own decision.
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Joining forces with the German non-profit organization Ecosia, Qwant released Standinga European-based, privacy-focused search index that could help search engines like yours reduce their dependence on Google and Bing. But both partners still lag far behind their American rivals in notoriety and reach; even the slightly more popular Ecosia has only about 20 million users, not billions.
Capturing market share is arguably the biggest problem facing companies challenging the American giants, but public contracts could give them an advantage. For example, the European Commission’s tender will also benefit French cloud providers CleverCloud and OVHCloud, as well as STACKIT, which Lidl’s parent company Schwarz Group created for its own needs, but now commercializes.
The prospect of winning big contracts with European institutions could encourage other players to follow in the footsteps of the German retail heavyweight, or at least that is the hope. According to its promoters, “an additional objective of the tender was to encourage the market to offer sovereign digital solutions that comply with EU laws and values.”
However, the Commission’s decision to avoid excessive dependence on a single supplier could be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, diversification could provide more resilience and alleviate concerns about dependency. On the other hand, it won’t be the best shortcut to boosting Europe’s next trillion-dollar company.
To the cynical and pragmatic, sovereign technology may seem motivated by business: a way to ensure that the euros stay at home. But Europe’s conscious decoupling from American technology has not always translated into contracts for its startups. For example, France is abandoning Windows for the open source Linux operating system. Institutions in Austria, Denmark, Italyand Germany Similarly, they are looking to replace Microsoft’s suite of products with open source alternatives, such as LibreOffice.
This shift is sometimes accompanied by a “build, don’t buy” philosophy that has drawn criticism. The French Court of Auditors has questioned the expense in internal tools like Visio, a supposed replacement for Zoom and Microsoft Teams. The financial newspaper Les Échos also reported on reaction expressed throughout the technological ecosystemincluding this rhetorical question: “If the government doesn’t lead by example, how can large private companies be expected to follow?”
Private buyers can decide the outcome
In fact, large private companies have not followed this example much. German airline Lufthansa chose Starlink, backed by Elon Musk for its wifi service. Air France did it toonow also a private airline but still partly controlled by the French and Dutch states, and there is a possibility that the French state rail operator SNCF can do the same.
Whether large companies choose alternatives to American suppliers depends largely on whether they have technologically attractive European options. in a argued with Polandmusk fixed that “there is no substitute for Starlink”, but European governments I intend to prove him wrong.. Public sentiment could also play a role, and it may not be limited to many European people and officials. leaving x.
Not being American is becoming an advantage
After President Trump threatened to take control of Greenland, apps to boycott American products appeared jumped to the top of the Danish App Store – a sign that the demand to cut back on American technology is growing. Pressure on European governments to reconsider your contracts is also increasing, and Palantir’s latest launch mini manifesto It is unlikely to help their cause in the EU. and the united kingdom
That tech billionaires publicly defend views that many Europeans do not share is also a sign that the divorce is bilateral. When Meta decided delay the launch of Threads in the EU Beyond concerns with European legislation, it was also a reminder that the region is just a secondary market for tech giants and that they can afford to ignore it.
On the contrary, this creates a market opportunity for solutions designed for Europe, its many languages and cultural nuances. Naturally, this alone should encourage demand in their domestic markets, with an additional boost if supporters of the EuroStack Initiative manage to do it Mandatory for the European public sector to buy local products..
Europe may want to buy European products, but there are also hopes that “sovereign technology” will be sold abroad. Mistral AI he supposedly saw his income increase for being an alternative to OpenAI. Meanwhile, the Canadian and German governments support The merger of Cohere with Aleph Alpha create a “transatlantic AI powerhouse” that serves businesses and governments around the world. In 2026, not being American (or Chinese or Russian) will increasingly be a selling point.
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