Not only Zoom and Teams: France is standing up to U.S. digital dominance: “It feels kind of like there’s a real zeitgeist shift”

President Donald Trump’s shake-up of the world order, largely set up by the United States in the wake of World War II, is having several knock-on effects and unintended consequences around the globe.

His America First agenda, instead of drawing more investment in the U.S. and making the nation’s companies the center of world production, is making investors reconsider holding American assets and causing fears about potential adverse consequences of American dominance in certain sectors.

Particularly Trump’s bullying of European allies over his desire to acquire Greenland, slapping tariffs on products from EU nations and sanctioning judges over their court room decisions that he doesn’t agree with, which have all set off alarm bells and caused nations across the continent to take action to ensure their sovereignty.

One area where this new independence drive may be felt most profoundly is in the U.S. tech sector as Europe is its biggest market after the US itself. Governments and institutions across Europe are looking to ween themselves off digital services from big U.S. tech companies and switch over to free open source and homegrown systems reports Associated Press.

Nick Reiners, senior geotechnology analyst at the Eurasia Group, told the AP that there is much more “political momentum behind this idea now that we need to de-risk from U.S. tech… It feels kind of like there’s a real zeitgeist shift.”

France will adopt “sovereign” digital office tool, ditching Microsoft Teams, Zoom and other US services

Last week, France announced that it will replace Microsoft Teams and Zoom in all government departments with Visio, its own domestically developed video conferencing platform, by the year 2027. This is part of a larger strategy to establish “digital sovereignty amid rising geopolitical tensions and fears of foreign surveillance or service disruptions,” said David Amiel, minister for the civil service and state reform.

Visio is part of the nation’s La Suite Numérique plan, which it has been developing over the past decade in partnership with Germany and the Netherlands. This digital ecosystem of sovereign tools has been designed for use by “public agents” and not for use by public or private companies “with a clear objective: significantly improving control over its information systems.”

“The aim is to end the use of non-European solutions and guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful and sovereign tool,” said Amiel.

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