Europe's digital dependence on US tech, and why I am switching to European alternatives

One email account shows the whole problem

In May 2025 the Associated Press reported that Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, had lost access to his email and that his bank accounts in the UK had been blocked. According to ICC staff, Microsoft had cancelled his email address, and he had moved to Proton Mail, a Swiss provider.¹

The trigger was American, not technical. In February 2025 President Trump signed Executive Order 14203, "Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court", and a week later the US Treasury put Khan on its sanctions list under that order.² The order followed the ICC's arrest warrants for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, and it threatens penalties for anyone who gives Khan financial, material or technological support.¹

Microsoft's account of what happened has moved. In February 2026 it apologised to the House of Commons Business and Trade Committee for an "inaccuracy" in its evidence and asked for the record to be corrected. It now says: "At no point did Microsoft cease or suspend its services to the ICC." A Dutch press report, which The Register's source confirmed, says Microsoft told the court that the sanctions required denying Khan access, and that otherwise it would end email for the whole organisation. The court then suspended his account.³

Whichever version you prefer, the point is the same. A senior international legal official lost his own email because of a decision taken in Washington. No glitch, no unpaid bill. That one story captures how much of Europe's daily work runs on American infrastructure, and what that can mean when politics turn.

Europe runs on American clouds

Here are the numbers. The market analysts SRG put the European cloud market at €61 billion in 2024. Amazon, Microsoft and Google together held 70% of it. European providers held about 15%, down from 29% in 2017. The two largest European providers, SAP and Deutsche Telekom, held 2% each.⁴

Each bar is a group of providers, and its height is that group's share of European cloud spending in 2024. The third bar is simply what is left: 100% minus 70% minus 15%. The takeaway is the gap. Three American companies take more than four times what every European provider takes together.

Next door, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) found the same concentration in its own market and concluded that competition is not working well, with egress fees (the charges for moving your data out) a barrier to switching.⁵ For Irish businesses the more useful point is the law: as customers in the EU, they get the EU Data Act's switching rights directly, which I come to below.⁶

And it goes well beyond the cloud. Think about a typical business. The operating system on the laptops: Windows or macOS. The office suite: Microsoft 365. The email marketing: Mailchimp, owned by the American company Intuit since 2021.⁷ The team chat: Slack or Teams. The video calls: Zoom or Teams again. The messaging app on every phone: WhatsApp, owned by Meta. Layer after layer runs through American companies, which means it runs through American law.

What the CLOUD Act actually says

That law has a name. The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD Act) of 2018 added one section to the US code. Here it is in full, because it is short:

"A provider of electronic communication service or remote computing service shall comply with the obligations of this chapter to preserve, backup, or disclose the contents of a wire or electronic communication and any record or other information pertaining to a customer or subscriber within such provider's possession, custody, or control, regardless of whether such communication, record, or other information is located within or outside of the United States."⁸

Read the last phrase twice. What matters is who controls the data, not where the server stands. Your data can sit in a data centre in Frankfurt, but if a provider subject to US law controls it, a valid US order can require that provider to hand it over. The section works through the legal process in that chapter of US law, so it is not a free for all. But it is not your call either.

An example: a Cork company keeps its customer database on a US hyperscaler's data centre region in Ireland. The data never leaves Ireland. Under the section above, that does not matter. The provider has the data in its "possession, custody, or control", so a US order reaches it. Whether a European provider with a large American business could also be reached is a question for a lawyer. A provider with no US presence is a very different conversation.

The legal route for data exists, and it is a political one

To be fair to the other side: sending personal data to the US is lawful today. In July 2023 the European Commission decided that the EU US Data Privacy Framework gives adequate protection for personal data sent to US organisations certified under it.⁹ In September 2025 the EU General Court dismissed the challenge brought by the French MP Philippe Latombe and confirmed that, when the decision was adopted, the US ensured an adequate level of protection.¹⁰

So this is not about breaking the GDPR. It is about dependence. The same judgment notes that the Commission must keep watching the US legal framework and may suspend, amend or repeal its decision if that framework changes.¹⁰ The two frameworks before this one, Safe Harbour and Privacy Shield, were both struck down by the Court of Justice.¹⁰ A transfer route that rests on an American executive order is only as stable as American politics. If you want the compliance side of this in detail, I cover it in AI in business and in vetting your data processors.

Why the "what if" now feels like "what now"

For years, all of this was theoretical. A worry for privacy people while everyone else got on with their day. Trump's second term changed that for me.

The administration sanctioned the ICC's chief prosecutor.² At the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, Vice President JD Vance told European leaders: "Across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat." Both he and Trump have been sharply critical of the EU's rules for social media.¹¹ That is the same direction of travel that makes Europe's wish to regulate tech companies a point of conflict. In January 2026 Trump announced a 10% tariff on goods from eight European countries that opposed US control of Greenland, the UK among them, rising to 25% on 1 June unless the US reached a deal for "the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland". The White House had not ruled out taking the territory by force.¹²

When a government treats its allies like that, the question of who controls your email, your files and your servers stops being abstract.

Governments are already moving

Some European governments have stopped waiting.

In Austria, and this one is close to home for me, the Bundesheer (the Austrian Armed Forces) removed Microsoft Office from its computers and moved about 16,000 workstations to LibreOffice, the open source office suite. The officer leading it was explicit that this was not about money: "We are not doing this to save money." The aim was digital sovereignty and "to ensure that data is only processed in house". What I like most: the army paid for more than five person years of work on features it needed and contributed them back to LibreOffice, so every user benefits.¹³

In January 2026 France announced that Visio, a video conferencing tool built by the government's digital directorate, will replace Zoom, Teams, Webex and Google Meet across the state by 2027. Moving 100,000 users off commercial platforms is expected to save about €1 million a year in licence fees.¹⁴ Visio's data is hosted by Outscale, a Dassault subsidiary certified under France's SecNumCloud scheme, and its transcription and summary features come from French AI companies.¹⁵

The German state of Schleswig Holstein finished moving more than 40,000 mailboxes for about 30,000 employees from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook to Open Xchange and Thunderbird in October 2025. Its plan is to phase out Microsoft Office next, and in the long term to replace Windows with open source systems such as Linux.¹⁶ Denmark's Ministry of Digitalisation began replacing Office 365 with LibreOffice in June 2025, aiming to finish by the end of that year.¹⁷ The French city of Lyon is replacing Microsoft Office with OnlyOffice and plans to move to Linux.¹⁸

At European level, Austria initiated a Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty, and all member states adopted it in the run up to the Summit on European Digital Sovereignty in Berlin on 18 November 2025.¹⁹ It is a declaration, not a law. It does show where the wind is blowing.

The pattern is clear. Big Tech is no longer the default in sensitive European government work.

I have already started switching

"That is all well and good for governments with big IT budgets," you might say, "but what about the rest of us?" Fair point. So here is what I have been doing myself. I have been replacing US tech with European alternatives step by step, and most of it has been smoother than I expected.

Operating systems. I switched to Linux: Ubuntu on the desktop, Debian on servers. There is a learning curve, especially if your team has only ever used Windows. But modern Linux is genuinely friendly, there are no licence fees, and it is open source, so no single company or government can pull the rug from under you.

Office software. I use LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office. It does word processing, spreadsheets and presentations perfectly well for day to day business. Is it identical to Microsoft Office? No. Does it do what most people need? Absolutely. It works in the Open Document Format, an international standard (ISO/IEC 26300), so your files are not locked into one vendor's format.²⁰ The Austrian army shows that even big migrations, with years of templates and macros, can be managed.¹³

Cloud hosting. This was the big one for me. Instead of AWS or DigitalOcean, I moved my infrastructure to Hetzner, a German provider registered in Gunzenhausen.²¹ It costs considerably less than AWS, the performance is excellent, and my data sits in European data centres under European jurisdiction. Other European options include OVHcloud, which calls itself Europe's leading cloud provider,²² Exoscale, a Swiss provider owned by A1 Digital of the Telekom Austria Group,²³ and IONOS, with its headquarters in Germany.²⁴

Email marketing. Instead of Mailchimp or Postmark (whose owner, ActiveCampaign, is based in Chicago),²⁵ I use Mailjet. It was founded in 2010²⁶ and has been part of the Swedish company Sinch since December 2021.²⁷ It handles both marketing and transactional email very well, and its collaborative editing is genuinely useful if you work with others. Another European option is Brevo, registered in Paris, which combines email, SMS and CRM in one platform.²⁸

Messaging. Instead of WhatsApp, I use Threema for anything sensitive. It is Swiss, and unlike most messengers it does not need a phone number or an email address to sign up.²⁹ For business team communication, Wire is another option, built by Wire Swiss GmbH in Zug, with end to end encryption and an on premises version.³⁰ Element, built on the open Matrix protocol, was the base for Tchap, the French government's secure messaging service.³¹

Video calls. Instead of Zoom or Teams, there is Jitsi Meet, which is completely open source and which you can run on your own server.³²

Search. Instead of Google, I have been using Ecosia and Qwant. Qwant says it does not store your search history by default and does not sell your data.³³ The two have set up a joint venture in Paris, European Search Perspective, to build a European search index of their own.³⁴

Email hosting. Instead of Gmail, there is Proton Mail from Proton AG in Geneva³⁵ or Tuta (formerly Tutanota) from Tutao GmbH in Hanover, which encrypts your data end to end.³⁶

How hard the switch is depends on your size

Let me be honest about the challenges. Switching is not a matter of downloading different software and calling it a day.

For individuals and small businesses, the switch is very doable. Most of the alternatives above are mature, well supported products. You may lose a few niche features and there will be an adjustment period, but the core is there.

For larger organisations, it gets harder. If you have run your whole operation on AWS for years, with dozens of proprietary services woven together, moving is a major project. In my estimate, it takes careful planning, real investment and probably 12 to 24 months of parallel running. For enterprises deep in Microsoft's world, with Active Directory, SharePoint, Teams, Azure and thousands of custom integrations, a complete switch could take three to five years. Some specialist tools have no European equivalent yet, especially in advanced AI services.

The research firm Forrester predicted that "no European enterprise will shift entirely from U.S. hyperscalers in 2026."³⁷ They are probably right. In its UK investigation, the CMA found that fewer than 1% of cloud customers switch provider each year.⁵ This is a marathon, not a sprint.

That is no reason to accept the status quo. The approach should be pragmatic and step by step. Start with the low hanging fruit: email, messaging, office software and basic hosting. Move the most sensitive workloads first. Build on open standards and containers, so that the next move is easier than this one.

Can your existing data move?

This is the question that keeps IT directors up at night. Years of documents in Microsoft 365, terabytes in AWS or Azure, whole processes built around Google. Can it actually move?

Voluntarily, yes, and the law now helps in the EU. The EU Data Act applies from 12 September 2025.⁶ Cloud contracts must let a customer switch provider, or move everything back in house, within a transitional period of at most 30 calendar days, with the old provider giving reasonable help and keeping the service running. Until 12 January 2027 providers may charge for switching, but only at cost. From 12 January 2027 they may not charge for the switching process at all.⁶

For readers in Ireland there is no catch. The Act covers providers of data processing services serving customers in the European Union, wherever the provider itself is established, and as a regulation it applies directly, with no Irish law needed in between.⁶ An Irish business on a US hyperscaler is a customer in the EU, so the 30 day switching period and, from 12 January 2027, the ban on switching charges are its rights. There is more good news on top. In March 2024 AWS said it would waive its charges for moving data out to the internet when a customer leaves, for "all AWS customers around the world and from any AWS Region", on request through its support team.³⁸

"Possible" and "painless" are still two different things. Migration costs money, takes time and carries risk. The bigger your data and the tighter your systems are woven together, the more it hurts. I wrote about what goes wrong in one kind of migration in the hidden dangers of switching payment gateways.

Now, what if organisations are forced to move? The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) published a scenario in December 2025 in which, in November 2026, the US president signs an executive order called "Regulating Access to American Technology". It would let him declare a digital security emergency and limit or shut off US digital services, such as cloud, AI and military software, for foreign users.³⁹ It is a hypothetical. Imagine, too, a provider doubling its prices for European customers as part of a trade war.

If something like that happens and a business has not prepared, the damage would be severe: losing access to its own data, its own systems and its own communications, at short notice. You do not manage that risk by hoping. You manage it by having a plan, starting early and building the ability to leave into every layer.

Worked example: costing a move from a US hyperscaler to a European provider

Here is how I would put numbers on it. Long Walk Prints is an invented online print shop in Galway, at longwalkprints.example. It runs its shop, database and file storage on a US hyperscaler. Every figure below is the example's own assumption, not a real price list.

Step 1: the monthly bills. The current hyperscaler bill is €1,400 a month. Long Walk gets a quote from a European provider for the same capacity: €560 a month. The monthly saving is:

$$S = B_{\text{old}} - B_{\text{new}} = 1{,}400 - 560 = 840$$

So $S = €840$ a month, where $B_{\text{old}}$ is the old monthly bill and $B_{\text{new}}$ the new one.

Step 2: the one off cost. Three parts:

• Engineering: 15 days at €600 a day, so $15 \times 600 = €9{,}000$.
• Parallel running: two months on the new provider while the old one still runs. The old bill is paid anyway, so only the new one is extra: $2 \times 560 = €1{,}120$.
• Contingency: 20% of the engineering, because migrations always find a surprise: $0.20 \times 9{,}000 = €1{,}800$.

Data transfer out is assumed to be €0, because Long Walk asks for the exit waiver described above. Without it, add the per gigabyte charge from your own contract.

$$C = 9{,}000 + 1{,}120 + 1{,}800 = 11{,}920$$

So the one off cost is $C = €11{,}920$.

Step 3: the payback period. How many months of savings repay the one off cost?

$$T = \frac{C}{S}$$

Here $T$ is the payback period in months, $C$ the one off cost of the move in euro and $S$ the monthly saving in euro. It is a plain ratio, explained in Foundations: ratios and rates.

$$T = \frac{11{,}920}{840} = 14.19$$

So $T$ is just over 14 months, and Long Walk is back in the black in the 15th month after the switch.

Step 4: three years, in today's money. A euro saved in year three is worth less than a euro today. With a discount rate of 8% a year (the example's assumption) and the savings counted at the end of each year, the net present value is:

$$NPV = \sum_{t=1}^{n} \frac{12S}{(1+d)^t} - C$$

Here $NPV$ is the net present value in euro, $n$ the number of years, $t$ each year in turn, $12S$ the yearly saving, $d$ the yearly discount rate as a decimal and $C$ the one off cost. The idea behind it is in Foundations: discounting.

The yearly saving is $12 \times 840 = €10{,}080$. Year by year:

$$\frac{10{,}080}{1.08} = 9{,}333.33 \qquad \frac{10{,}080}{1.08^2} = 8{,}641.98 \qquad \frac{10{,}080}{1.08^3} = 8{,}001.83$$

These are the three years' savings, each in today's euro, with $t = 1, 2, 3$.

$$NPV = 9{,}333.33 + 8{,}641.98 + 8{,}001.83 - 11{,}920 = 14{,}057.14$$

Over three years the move is worth about €14,057 in today's money. Without discounting it would be $36 \times 840 - 11{,}920 = €18{,}320$.

Step 5: test the assumption that matters most. Suppose the European quote had been €1,100 a month instead. Then $S = 1{,}400 - 1{,}100 = €300$, the parallel running costs $2 \times 1{,}100 = €2{,}200$, and $C = 9{,}000 + 2{,}200 + 1{,}800 = €13{,}000$. The payback is $13{,}000 / 300 = 43.3$ months, and over three years the move loses $36 \times 300 - 13{,}000 = -€2{,}200$.

That is the honest lesson. Sometimes the move pays for itself on cost alone. Sometimes it does not, and then the case rests on control: who can switch your business off. Put a number on the cost first, so you know which of the two decisions you are making.

The order I would move things in

The advice from earlier, as a sequence:

Read it from top to bottom. Each box is one step, and the diamond is the one decision: whether a move pays for itself, worked out as in the example. A "no" there is not a "stay". It hands the decision to the question of control.

The bigger picture: a European digital identity

Let me zoom out, because this is not only about technology. It is about what kind of continent we want to be.

For decades Europe has been content to consume American technology. We used the platforms, adopted the standards and got convenience in return. That arrangement came with strings attached, and I believe they are now being pulled hard by a US administration that treats Europe less as an ally and more as a rival.

Europe does not need to be hostile to the United States. But it does need to stop being dependent on it.

And this is not only defensive. It is an opportunity. Gartner expects European spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure to more than triple between 2025 and 2027, from $6.9 billion in 2025.⁴⁰ Public authorities in the EU spend around 14% of GDP, over €2.4 trillion a year, on services, works and supplies.⁴¹ A deliberate choice to buy European for digital infrastructure would steer a meaningful part of that into homegrown companies, with jobs, investment and innovation following.

Every euro spent on a European provider instead of a US hyperscaler stays in the European tech economy. Every government that switches to LibreOffice funds open source work that benefits everyone, as the Austrian army has shown.¹³

Europe has strong engineering, some of the best universities on the planet and, in the GDPR, a privacy law others look to. What it has lacked is the political will to turn that into digital independence. Ironically, Trump's belligerence may give Europe exactly the push it needed. I would like to see his tariffs and threats backfire, and become the reason Europe finally invests in its own technology and comes out stronger, more united and more sovereign.

The tools exist. The alternatives are mature enough. The political momentum is building. The only question is whether we have the courage to make the switch.

I already have. And I would encourage you to do the same.

Footnotes

1. Molly Quell, Trump's sanctions on ICC's chief prosecutor have halted tribunal's work, officials and lawyers say, Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 15 May 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trumps-sanctions-on-iccs-chief-prosecutor-have-halted-tribunals-work-officials-and-lawyers-say

2. US Department of the Treasury, Office of Foreign Assets Control, Recent actions: issuance of Executive Order 14203 and International Criminal Court related designation, 13 February 2025, https://ofac.treasury.gov/recent-actions/20250213

3. Lindsay Clark, Microsoft throws spox under the bus after Parliament testimony on ICC email kerfuffle, The Register, 18 February 2026, https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/18/microsoft_asks_uk_parliament_to_correct_record/

4. SRG, European cloud providers' local market share now holds steady at 15%, 24 July 2025, https://www.srgresearch.com/articles/european-cloud-providers-local-market-share-now-holds-steady-at-15

5. Competition and Markets Authority, Cloud services market investigation: summary of final decision, paragraphs 5, 6, 24, 26 and 29 to 35, 31 July 2025, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/688b20e6ff8c05468cb7b120/summary_of_final_decision.pdf

6. Regulation (EU) 2023/2854 (Data Act), Articles 1(3)(f), 25, 29 and 50, EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/HTML/?uri=CELEX:32023R2854

7. Intuit, Intuit completes acquisition of Mailchimp, 1 November 2021, https://www.intuit.com/company/press-room/press-releases/2021/intuit-completes-acquisition-of-mailchimp/

8. 18 U.S. Code § 2713, Required preservation and disclosure of communications and records, added by Pub. L. 115-141, 23 March 2018, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2713

9. Commission Implementing Decision (EU) 2023/1795 on the adequate level of protection of personal data under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, 10 July 2023, EUR-Lex, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dec_impl/2023/1795/oj/eng

10. General Court of the European Union, Press release No 106/25, Judgment in Case T-553/23 Latombe v Commission, 3 September 2025, https://curia.europa.eu/jcms/upload/docs/application/pdf/2025-09/cp250106en.pdf

11. RFE/RL, Vance warns Europe about free speech and "unvetted" immigration, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 14 February 2025, https://www.rferl.org/a/munich-vance-free-speech-immigration/33315127.html

12. Emma Burrows, Josh Boak and Daniel Niemann, Trump announces a 10% tariff on 8 European countries for opposing U.S. control of Greenland, Associated Press via PBS NewsHour, 17 January 2026, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/trump-announces-a-10-tariff-on-8-european-countries-for-opposing-u-s-control-of-greenland

13. Daniel AJ Sokolov, Austria's armed forces switch to LibreOffice, heise online, 18 September 2025, https://www.heise.de/en/news/Austria-s-armed-forces-switch-to-LibreOffice-10660761.html

14. Carly Page, France to replace US videoconferencing wares with unfortunately named sovereign alternative, The Register, 27 January 2026, https://www.theregister.com/2026/01/27/france_videoconferencing_visio/

15. Frédéric Olivieri, L'État dit stop à Teams et Zoom, bienvenue à Visio, Siècle Digital, 28 January 2026, https://siecledigital.fr/2026/01/28/letat-dit-stop-a-teams-et-zoom-bienvenue-a-visio/

16. heise online, Schleswig-Holstein's e-mail systems converted to open source, 7 October 2025, https://heise.de/-10733737

17. The Register, Danish department determined to dump Microsoft, 13 June 2025, https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/13/danish_department_dump_microsoft

18. The Register, French city of Lyon ditching Microsoft for open source office and collab tools, 26 June 2025, https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/26/lyon_leaving_microsoft/

19. Council of the European Union, Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty, information from Austria, document 15781/25, 27 November 2025, https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-15781-2025-INIT/en/pdf

20. OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Technical Committee, accessed November 2026, https://groups.oasis-open.org/communities/tc-community-home2?CommunityKey=4bf06d41-79ad-4c58-9e8e-018dc7d05da8

21. Hetzner Online GmbH, Legal notice, accessed November 2026, https://www.hetzner.com/legal/legal-notice/

22. OVHcloud, Corporate website, accessed November 2026, https://corporate.ovhcloud.com/en/

23. Telekom Austria Group, A1 digital acquires Swiss cloud provider Exoscale, 30 August 2017, via TelecomTV, https://www.telecomtv.com/content/industry-announcements/a1-digital-acquires-swiss-cloud-provider-exoscale-28170/

24. IONOS, About IONOS, accessed November 2026, https://www.ionos.com/about

25. Postmark, Postmark and DMARC Digests acquired by ActiveCampaign, 3 May 2022, https://postmarkapp.com/blog/postmark-and-dmarc-digests-acquired-by-activecampaign

26. Mailjet, About us, accessed November 2026, https://www.mailjet.com/about/

27. Sinch, Sinch completes acquisition of Pathwire, 7 December 2021, https://sinch.com/news/sinch-completes-acquisition-pathwire/

28. Brevo, Terms of use, accessed November 2026, https://www.brevo.com/legal/termsofuse/

29. Threema, Threema home page, accessed November 2026, https://threema.com/en

30. Wire, Legal and imprint, accessed November 2026, https://wire.com/en/legal and https://wire.com/en/imprint

31. Element, Case study: Tchap, accessed November 2026, https://element.io/case-studies/tchap

32. Jitsi, Jitsi Meet, accessed November 2026, https://jitsi.org/jitsi-meet/

33. Qwant, About Qwant, accessed November 2026, https://about.qwant.com/en/

34. Team Qwant, Ecosia and Qwant join forces to develop European search index, 8 November 2024, https://betterweb.qwant.com/en/2024/11/08/ecosia-and-qwant-join-forces-to-develop-european-search-index/

35. Proton AG, Privacy Policy (company details), accessed November 2026, https://proton.me/legal/privacy

36. Tuta, Imprint, accessed November 2026, https://tuta.com/imprint, and Tuta, Time to celebrate: Tutanota is now Tuta, 7 November 2023, https://tuta.com/blog/tutanota-is-now-tuta

37. Forrester, Forrester's 2026 European predictions, 8 October 2025, https://www.forrester.com/press-newsroom/forrester-european-2026-predictions/

38. Sébastien Stormacq, Free data transfer out to internet when moving out of AWS, AWS News Blog, 5 March 2024, updated 8 October 2026, https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/free-data-transfer-out-to-internet-when-moving-out-of-aws/

39. Giorgos Verdi, Get over your X: a European plan to escape American technology, European Council on Foreign Relations, 10 December 2025, https://ecfr.eu/publication/get-over-your-x-a-european-plan-to-escape-american-technology/

40. Lindsay Clark, Europe's sovereign cloud spend set to triple as geopolitics bite, The Register, 9 February 2026, https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/09/europe_sovereign_cloud_spend

41. European Commission, European Commission seeks views on the Public Procurement Directives, 16 December 2024, https://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/mytent_t/redirection/item/862363/en/4109