European governments are expanding moves to reduce dependence on U.S. software and cloud services and switch to European “sovereign technology.”

TechCrunch reported on April 27 that France is moving to cut reliance on Windows, and the European Commission has allocated sovereign cloud contracts to European cloud providers.

The main driver of the shift is the U.S. CLOUD Act, which took effect in 2018. The law requires U.S.-based technology companies to comply with law enforcement requests even for data stored overseas. That has raised concerns that sensitive public data cannot fully escape the reach of U.S. law even if servers are located in Europe.

France has begun shifting its health data infrastructure. The French government said a year ago it would move the Health Data Hub from Microsoft Azure to a sovereign cloud. The contract was awarded to French cloud company Scaleway. Scaleway is an affiliate of French telecoms group Iliad and is expanding its data centre network across Europe.

The European Commission selected Scaleway, CleverCloud, OVHcloud and STACKIT in a 180 million euro sovereign cloud tender. Amazon Web Services' “AWS European Sovereign Cloud,” offered in response to European concerns, was not included. Some have also pointed out that U.S. technology influence is not fully excluded as some providers use S3NS, a joint venture between Thales and Google Cloud.

A similar trend has emerged in search. Qwant, mentioned as a candidate default search engine for France's public sector, once relied on Microsoft Bing. Qwant later worked with German non-profit Ecosia to build “Staan,” a Europe-based privacy-focused search index. Its user base remains limited compared with Google and Bing.

The shift to homegrown technology has also sparked controversy. France's audit office took issue with spending related to the videoconferencing tool Visio. The tool was promoted as an alternative to Zoom and Microsoft Teams. Critics in France's technology ecosystem said private-sector adoption would also be difficult unless the government takes the lead.

Europe's push to cut reliance on U.S. technology is not immediately translating into growth for domestic companies. Private-sector choices also vary. Lufthansa and Air France have adopted Starlink for in-flight WiFi, and France's state-owned railway SNCF is considering a similar option. France is pushing a switch from Windows to Linux, and public institutions in Austria, Denmark, Italy and Germany are also considering open-source tools such as LibreOffice.

Political tensions are also reinforcing the trend. After U.S. President Donald Trump expressed an intention to control Greenland, U.S. product boycott apps rose in the rankings on Denmark's app store. Calls are also spreading in Europe to review U.S. technology contracts.

Some also say the European Commission's approach of selecting multiple providers reduces dependence on any single company but has limits in fostering large European technology companies quickly. Calls are also continuing to make it mandatory for the public sector to buy local technology.

Mistral AI has reportedly seen revenue increase as demand grows for alternatives to OpenAI. The Canadian and German governments are supporting a merger of AI companies Cohere and Aleph Alpha.