{"id":524371,"date":"2026-06-08T10:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/524371\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T10:06:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:06:12","slug":"all-the-ways-europe-is-ditching-american-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/524371\/","title":{"rendered":"All the Ways Europe Is Ditching American Technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

Europe is done with American Big Tech. Well, sort of. Since the start of President Donald Trump\u2019s chaotic second administration last year, concerned governments and companies across the continent have accelerated plans to end their near-total reliance on technology<\/a> from US firms.<\/p>\n

Alongside political declarations, home-grown European tech development, and millions in additional funding, a WIRED analysis has documented dozens of public instances<\/a> of companies, governments, NGOs, and education establishments stepping away from US technology companies in favor of open source or local alternatives. It is likely the tip of the iceberg.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe aggressive policies by the Trump administration, attacking international law, as well as the EU and democratic principles, has led to several wake-up calls,\u201d says Marietje Schaake, a non-resident fellow at Stanford University\u2019s Cyber Policy Center and a former member of the European Parliament.<\/p>\n

The moves are widespread\u2014and growing. Last week, the European Commission launched its official long-term plans<\/a> to rely less on US technology. The European Parliament has switched<\/a> the default search engine on its devices from Google to the French alternative Qwant. Thousands of workers in the French government are using its own open-source office software<\/a>\u2014dubbed LaSuite\u2014as officials aim to \u201cbreak free\u201d from dependence on American tech firms. An open-source documents offering from more than a dozen European tech companies, called Euro-Office<\/a>, is due to launch imminently. Cities across the Netherlands, France, and Germany are all moving away from Microsoft Office and Google Docs<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not just productivity software, either. The Dutch government is moving its code away from Microsoft-owned Github to its own repository<\/a>. In a series of decisions, Finland reportedly<\/a> decided not to move its election data to Amazon\u2019s cloud services, while the organization behind Belgium\u2019s .be top-level domain has said it will move away from AWS<\/a>. Meanwhile, Eurosky<\/a> has been spun up as an interoperable alternative to Bluesky<\/a> on the AT Protocol that underlies both social networks.<\/p>\n

WIRED gathered the publicly known instances of European entities abandoning US-based Big Tech. (Click the arrows to scroll the timeline of instances below, or view them in this Google Sheet<\/a> or a Proton Sheet<\/a>).<\/p>\n

While many of the \u201cdigital sovereignty\u201d plans were in place before the start of Trump\u2019s second term, often cited as urgently driving the change is the fallout from US sanctions against<\/a> officials linked to the International Criminal Court. (The court itself ended up moving away from Microsoft\u2019s technology<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The long list of Europe\u2019s other concerns includes governments and companies not being in control of their own data; changing international relationships; dependence on tech from a small number of companies; potential access to data under the US CLOUD Act and FISA; and the closer-than-ever relationships between Big Tech firms and the Trump administration. \u201cCitizens, companies, and organizations are energized to take their digital future into their own hands,\u201d Schaake says. \u201cUntangled from billionaire interests as well as Trump\u2019s policies.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Europe is done with American Big Tech. Well, sort of. Since the start of President Donald Trump\u2019s chaotic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524372,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[73],"tags":[1463,1797,79,356,18,1015,31845,823,19,17,305,790],"class_list":["post-524371","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-amazon","tag-aws","tag-business","tag-donald-trump","tag-eire","tag-europe","tag-github","tag-google","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-microsoft","tag-politics"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116713933085066184","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524371","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=524371"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524371\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524371"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524371"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524371"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}