Europe is eager to wean itself off its reliance on US technology in the face of an increasingly hostile Trump administration – one that commands the loyalty of most of Silicon Valley.
France is preparing to phase out Zoom, Teams and other US video-conferencing platforms and begin using Visio, a French alternative, in 2027. The aim is to “guarantee the security and confidentiality of electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool”, said David Amiel, junior minister for the civil service and state reform.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, EU President Ursula von der Leyen stressed the “structural imperative” for Europe to “build a new form of independence”. But with a handful of US-headquartered companies controlling most of the world’s cloud computing infrastructure, critics question how realistic digital sovereignty really is.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Talk of “technological ‘decoupling’ from the US is hardly new”, said Sébastian Seibt on France24, but Donald Trump’s “aggressive rhetoric” towards his European allies and “open threats” to seize Greenland have created a “sudden sense of urgency”.
If the US president followed through his threats and asked Meta, Google and Amazon to “completely cut off European access to their services, our societies and economies would be completely disrupted”, Christophe Grosbost, of the Innovation Makers Alliance, told the news site. “It would be disastrous.”
France’s shift to Visio is “symbolic”, but a “big step” nonetheless, added Francesca Musiani, head of the Internet and Society Centre at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research. “At the very least, it signals a desire to reduce exposure to the American ecosystem as soon as a European alternative, however imperfect, becomes available.”
Big Tech firms have “sensed the tide turning” and have started to offer so-called “sovereign” solutions, said the news site. But critics “have been quick to warn against a ‘Euro-washing’ of American cloud services”.
“Sure, your data may live in Frankfurt,” said Steven Vaughan-Nichols on The Register, but “your fate still rests in Seattle”. If a US-headquartered company owns your cloud provider, it is legally obliged to hand over European data. And “I wouldn’t trust my data, secrets or services to a US company these days for love or money” – not while CEOs of Apple, Zoom and Amazon “all went obediently” to watch the White House screening of Amazon’s “Melania” documentary.
Europe’s “digital sovereignty paranoia” is now “feeding directly into procurement decisions”. It will hike IT spending this year, with a “big chunk” going into “sovereign cloud” options. “This isn’t just compliance theatre; it’s a straight‑up national economic security play.” Europe’s dependence on US cloud infrastructure is a “single-shock-event security nightmare” waiting to happen. What will you do if Trump “decides to unplug you?”
That scenario – a so-called US “kill switch” – has been “seriously discussed in tech industry and policy circles”, said BBC business reporter Daniel Thomas. But Google, Microsoft and Amazon provide 70% of Europe’s cloud-computing infrastructure. At the moment, there aren’t any “comparable alternatives”. Europe’s cloud-computing providers don’t have nearly the same scale or capabilities.
Europe’s reliance on US payment systems also “complicates matters”, said Suzanne Lynch, Bloomberg’s Brussels bureau chief. US companies like Visa, Mastercard and PayPal own “critical parts” of the world’s financial infrastructure, said European Central Bank executive board member Piero Cipollone. They “can theoretically pull the plug on us”, he said.
So we should prepare, said computer science professor Johan Linåker on The Conversation. For Europe to “meaningfully address the risks”, digital infrastructure “needs to be treated with the same seriousness as physical infrastructure” such as roads and power grids. “No country, let alone continent, will ever be completely digitally independent, and nor should they be,” he said. “But by pulling together, Europe can ensure its digital systems remain accessible even in a crisis – just as is expected from its physical infrastructure.”
What next?
Microsoft president Brad Smith promised that the firm would take legal action in the “exceedingly unlikely” event the US government ordered it to suspend services. “We will continue to look for new ways to ensure the European Commission and our European customers have the options and assurances they need to operate with confidence,” a spokesperson told the BBC.
The EU has developed a cloud sovereignty framework “with the intention of keeping European data under European control”, said The Conversation.
With the upcoming Cloud and AI Development Act, Brussels is effectively “pushing an open source-led exit from hyperscaler lock-in”, said The Register.
Ultimately, “it’s the money that speaks”, Martin Hullin, head of the European Network for Technological Resilience and Sovereignty at the Bertelsmann Foundation, told France 24. “It’s public contracts that make the difference,” he said.
If we say “this is about safeguarding European democracies”, perhaps “we’ll be willing to bear the short-term consequences (of shifting to homegrown solutions)”.