A messy road to technology independence in Europe

As journalists, we’re often the first to criticize European attempts to develop technological alternatives to US software, which the continent heavily relies on. However, just because the initial steps toward technology sovereignty are clumsy doesn’t mean the path isn't worth taking.

Poland has recently announced a technological sovereignty test for major public sector tech purchases. The country wants to retain control over critical systems and reduce reliance on foreign technology vendors.

Microsoft, Amazon, and Google control approximately 70% of the Polish cloud market. This trend is mirrored across Europe, where these 3 American giants dominate the cloud landscape.

With cloud dependency, European countries often cite the US Cloud Act under which American companies could be obliged to share user data with US law enforcement.

On top of that, their services are simply very expensive. For example, Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, says it will save 15 million euros ($17.5 million) in license costs for Windows, Microsoft Office, and other tools by switching to open source.

So we get to save some money on our road to independence, hurrah.

Much of what’s going on is, of course, highly politicized. While the concept of European technological sovereignty is decades old, only after Donald Trump’s recent reelection did we see a wave of to move away from the US.

Suggesting Europe is in cultural decline, the White House released a new national security strategy, which ignited stronger hostile feelings toward the US in Europe. It also set ablaze a similar trend that we saw years ago with China - governments and public institutions rushing to replace US-made tech with local alternatives.

Before I move to examples of just how messy this road to technological independence is, I want to mention a few more reasons why this needs to happen.

In theory, a kill switch scenario is absolutely possible. If the US decided to turn against Europe, it could force companies to disable many online services, rendering public services such as transportation and healthcare, and critical communications obsolete. Not highly likely at this point in international relations, but this needs to be taken into consideration.

By the way, we already had a glimpse of how the US could limit technology export to Europe when Anthropic had to "abruptly disable" Fable 5 and Mythos 5 after the US issued an export control directive ordering the company to suspend all foreign access to the models.

Another thing is that some of the US technology is invasive and dangerous. Countries like Germany are saying no to Palantir simply because it doesn’t want to grant total access to sensitive data. And, as a famous quote by Alex Karp goes, Palantir “is used on occasion to kill people.”

On top of that, we now have OpenAI agents on the loose, running around and autonomously hacking startups, with OpenAI openly bragging about AI models’ unexpected capabilities.

Reasons for making the switch are aplenty. Cybernews introduced the European tech sovereignty tracker to see which European countries are champions of digital sovereignty.

Some examples stand out. And not in the best possible way.

Euro-Office, Europe’s answer to Microsoft Office and Google Docs tech, could be vulnerable to Russian modifications, as it is mostly based on code from OnlyOffice, a Russian-linked open-source project, raising security concerns.

W Social looks to capitalize on the current European tech sovereignty movement, yet the platform is built on AT Protocol, developed by Bluesky Social PBC, an American company that owns the social media platform Bluesky.

Finally, Passwork, a password manager marketed as European, was developed in Russia. Russian state-linked users include Gazprom, Transneft, the Ministry of Defense, and the Federal Security Service.

Even with the best of friends, you should have your own bed to sleep in.