What’s behind Europe’s efforts to ditch U.S. software in favor of sovereign tech

European governments are accelerating efforts to reduce dependence on U.S. tech providers, driven by the CLOUD Act's extraterritorial data reach, geopolitical tensions, and growing public sentiment against American tech giants. France is migrating its Health Data Hub from Microsoft Azure to French cloud provider Scaleway, while the European Commission awarded a €180M sovereign cloud tender to four European providers. Multiple EU countries are replacing Microsoft products with open source alternatives like Linux and LibreOffice. However, progress is uneven: European alternatives still face dependency issues (e.g., Qwant relying on Bing), private companies like Lufthansa and Air France are choosing Starlink, and in-house government tools face criticism. The EuroStack initiative aims to mandate local procurement for Europe's public sector, while companies like Mistral AI and the Cohere-Aleph Alpha merger signal that 'not being American' is becoming a global selling point.