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As tensions between<\/span> President Donald Trump and Europe continue to simmer, the continent is accelerating its moves to reduce its addiction to US technology<\/a>. Cities and governments are ditching Microsoft Office for open-source alternatives, shifting to European cloud hosting<\/a> for local AI<\/a>, and moving defense data to systems without American involvement<\/a>. Nowhere has this been more clear than in France.<\/p>\n Over the last few months, the French government has sped up its efforts to develop and deploy its own technology for government officials. The country has, arguably, emerged at the head of Europe\u2019s growing digital sovereignty push, which aims to cut some reliance on US-based technology over concerns around data security, the Trump administration\u2019s unpredictability, and changing prices. French budget minister David Amiel recently called<\/a> for the state to \u201cbreak free\u201d from American systems and use those it can control.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not just explaining what we want to do,\u201d St\u00e9phanie Schaer, the head of DINUM<\/a>, France\u2019s digital transformation ministry, tells WIRED over a call on the nation\u2019s video-calling platform Visio. \u201cWe already did it in a few matters.\u201d So far, more than 40,000 French government staff have started using the home-grown video platform, while the rest will move away from Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and others by 2027. \u201cWe are confident enough to use it every day and we are not dependent on just one actor that will tell us you have to use my video conference,\u201d Schaer says.<\/p>\n Across France\u2019s central government agencies and vast civil service, officials plan to shift to as many French, European, and open source technology alternatives as possible in the coming years. Schaer says it is important for the French government to be in control of the technology that it is using, with data being stored locally in the country, not abroad.<\/p>\n As part of this, DINUM has been developing a set of productivity tools, collectively called \u201cLaSuite,\u201d since at least 2023. As well as Visio, it includes instant messaging app Tchap, Messagerie instead of Gmail or Outlook, Fichiers for documents and file sharing, plus text editing software Docs<\/a>, and Grist for spreadsheets. Some of the software is still in beta and has not been fully rolled out to French officials yet. However, Tchap already has 420,000 active users, Schaer says, with 20,000 civil servants adopting it each month.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are based on open source software. So we don\u2019t develop all the code,\u201d Schaer says. There are public plans for new<\/a> features<\/a>, although code is published on Microsoft-owned Github<\/a>. All data handled by the alternatives has to be processed in France and stored with providers who have approval from the country\u2019s cybersecurity agency ANSSI<\/a>. Earlier this month, the Dutch government moved its open-source code off of GitHub<\/a> and onto a Forgejo instance hosted on government-owned servers.<\/p>\n While open source is key, the French government is also working with other countries and private firms on the development of its tools. \u201cWe can reuse what has been developed by the community and we contribute to this community,\u201d Schaer says. For instance, Visio, which can host calls of up to 150 people and has AI transcription of calls, is built on technology from French firms Outscale and Pyannote.<\/p>\n While Schaer\u2019s department is aiming to lead by example, all of France\u2019s central government agencies have to come up with plans<\/a> to move away from US tech\u2014across office software, antivirus, AI, databases, and more\u2014by this fall. On April 23, French officials also announced the country will move its health data platform away from Microsoft to local cloud provider Scaleway, after a years-long decision process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n