Brussels is accelerating a government-led shift to open source and homegrown stacks after sanctions and geopolitical tensions exposed Europe’s reliance on American tech.
Europe is turning to open-source software and domestic technology stacks as its fastest route to digital sovereignty, after geopolitical tensions with Washington exposed deep structural dependence on US tech infrastructure.
An EU report shows the bloc relies on foreign suppliers for more than 80 per cent of its digital products, services, infrastructure and intellectual property. The risk became tangible when US sanctions on International Criminal Court judges cut access to services from Amazon and Google, revealing how easily critical systems could be disrupted.
Brussels is now pursuing “strategic independence” across defence, energy and technology, with a major “tech sovereignty” package covering cloud, artificial intelligence and chips due in March.
Open source is already central to that push. Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein migrated more than 40,000 government mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to Open-Xchange and Thunderbird, demonstrating public-sector viability at scale. France will require state employees to use domestic collaboration tools instead of Zoom or Microsoft Teams, while the European Parliament is reviewing its reliance on Microsoft. Franco-German partners Mistral and SAP are building a European AI-driven cloud, alongside wider EU-backed digital infrastructure projects.
“During the last year everybody has really realised how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies,” said EU tech tsar Henna Virkkunen, warning that “Dependencies… can be weaponised against us.”
“Digital technologies are no longer neutral tools,” added Sebastiano Toffaletti of the European Digital SME Alliance. For policymakers, open source is no longer a cost choice but resilience infrastructure — reducing vendor lock-in, improving auditability and keeping control of data within Europe.
