LONDON, U.K: Across Europe, governments are quietly rewriting the digital foundations of their public sectors, replacing familiar American software with local or open-source alternatives as fears grow about over-reliance on U.S. technology.

The shift has gathered momentum as geopolitical tensions rise and concerns deepen over data security, political leverage, and Europe's long-term technological independence. Nowhere is the change more visible than in France, where civil servants are preparing to abandon U.S.-based video conferencing platforms altogether.

The French government said last week that 2.5 million public employees will stop using services such as Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Webex, and GoTo Meeting by 2027, switching instead to Visio, a homegrown system.

The objective is "to put an end to the use of non-European solutions, to guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool," the announcement said.

"We cannot risk having our scientific exchanges, our sensitive data, and our strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors," David Amiel, a civil service minister, said in a press release.

The move reflects a broader push for "digital sovereignty," which is gaining traction across the continent. In Austria, soldiers are using open-source office software after the military dropped Microsoft Office. In Germany, bureaucrats in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein have migrated tens of thousands of employee email inboxes away from Microsoft products.

French President Emmanuel Macron has long promoted digital sovereignty, but analysts say the political urgency has intensified.

"It feels kind of like there's a real zeitgeist shift," said Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group. "There's a lot more political momentum behind this idea now that we need to de-risk from U.S. tech."

The issue dominated conversations at last month's World Economic Forum in Davos, where Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission's official for tech sovereignty, warned that Europe's reliance on external providers "can be weaponized against us."

"That's why it's so important that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to very critical fields of our economy or society," she said.

Concerns escalated last year when the International Criminal Court prosecutor was sanctioned by the Trump administration, prompting Microsoft to cancel the official's ICC email account. The move, first reported by the Associated Press, heightened fears of a potential "kill switch" that could cut off access to critical services.

Microsoft said it remained in contact with the ICC "throughout the process that resulted in the disconnection of its sanctioned official from Microsoft services. At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC."

Microsoft President Brad Smith has argued for maintaining trans-Atlantic trust. "Europe is the American tech sector's biggest market after the United States itself. It all depends on trust. Trust requires dialogue," he said in a CNN interview in Davos.

Other developments have reinforced Europe's unease. Officials worry about depending on Starlink, owned by Elon Musk, for communications in Ukraine. Meanwhile, repeated EU antitrust actions against companies such as Google have failed to curb Big Tech dominance significantly.

Data protection has also remained a flashpoint since revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden exposed U.S. surveillance practices. With most digital services now cloud-based, European officials fear foreign governments could gain leverage over sensitive information.

In response, U.S. cloud providers have rolled out "sovereign cloud" offerings hosted in Europe, owned by European entities, and operated exclusively by EU residents. The idea is that "only Europeans can take decisions so that they can't be coerced by the U.S.," Reiners said.

Schleswig-Holstein last year moved 44,000 employee inboxes from Microsoft to open-source email software, replaced SharePoint with Nextcloud, and is considering switching from Windows to Linux.

"We want to become independent of large tech companies and ensure digital sovereignty," Digitalization Minister Dirk Schrödter said.

France's city of Lyon has begun replacing Microsoft software with free alternatives, while Denmark and cities such as Copenhagen and Aarhus are testing open-source systems.

"We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely," Denmark's Digital Minister Caroline Stage Olsen wrote last year. "Too much public digital infrastructure is currently tied up with very few foreign suppliers."

The Austrian military has also switched to LibreOffice, developed by Germany-based The Document Foundation, which said the move "reflects a growing demand for independence from single vendors."

"At first, it was: we will save money, and by the way, we will get freedom," said Italo Vignoli of the foundation. "Today it is: we will be free, and by the way, we will also save some money."