Europe is moving decisively away from U.S. tech giants toward open-source alternatives, driven by concerns over digital sovereignty and reliability of American companies[1]. At the 2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe, industry leaders emphasized that this shift isn’t about isolation but resilience.
“What we’re really looking for is resilience. What we want for our countries, for our companies, for ourselves, is resilience in the face of unforeseen events in a fast-changing world. Open source allows us to be sovereign without being isolated,” said OpenInfra Foundation general manager Thierry Carrez[1:1].
This transition is already happening. The German state Schleswig-Holstein has replaced Microsoft Exchange and Outlook with open-source email solutions. Similar moves have been made by the Austrian military, Danish government organizations, and the French city of Lyon[1:2].
European companies are stepping up to fill the gap with open-source alternatives, including:
- Deutsche Telekom’s Open Telekom Cloud
- OVHcloud’s sovereign cloud services
- STACKIT and VanillaCore’s European-based offerings[1:3]
The movement gained additional momentum when the European Commission appointed its first executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy in 2024[1:4].
The solution is to get open source into schools early. Idk how tech education is across the EU, but here in the US kids are usually introduced to computers as early as elementary school (but I think today they might be using ipads or chromebooks instead). In my highschool, we were required to get Microsoft office certification before we’d even be allowed to graduate, which pissed me off even back then.
I hate Microsoft with all my heart but I think it’s smart to have some sort of general computer skills.
I grew up having to take keyboarding and learning about office software (Apple’s suite at the time but later Office in community college).
From what I hear the kids can’t even type, never mind actually navigating a filesystem or troubleshooting basic issues.
Minus the office certification it’s the same over here.