As more European organizations reconsider their reliance on US technology suppliers amid rising geopolitical and trade tensions, public sector organizations are leading the way in a potential shift to local tech providers. The German state of Schleswig-Holstein is moving tens of thousands of employees from Microsoft apps Office, Windows and Exchange to open-source alternatives, for example, while Denmarks’ Ministry of Digitalization has begun to phase out Office 365 in favor of LibreOffice . The French government recently announced plans to swap Microsoft Teams and Zoom for its own video conferencing platform for 200,000 employees – potentially saving €2 million a year in licensing costs. These are exceptions, however, and the European public sector is still heavily reliant on US suppliers. The German federal government spends €481 million on Microsoft licenses annually, a figure revealed in a response to a recent written inquiry by Rebecca Lenhard, a member of German Parliament representing the Green Party. That’s only the spending at a federal level, with the total amount across German states “certainly even higher,” said Lenhard, speaking during a roundtable discussion hosted by German open source software vendor, Nextcloud, this week. “It’s a lot of money we are investing in one company that we are completely dependent on.” The recent surge in interest around European digital sovereignty is driven by a desire to reduce the use of non-European suppliers. Not all see it as a positive development. Several tech leaders recently voiced concerns about digital sovereignty strategies , which they claim could increase business costs and slow user adoption of digital technologies in the region, hampering productivity and competitiveness. Still, the notion of digital sovereignty continues to gain traction among European organizations, a growing number of which plan to increase cloud computing spend with local providers . Sovereign cloud infrastructure-as-a-service revenues are set to triple by the end of 2027, according to Gartner. The topic has become a strategic focus at a national government and EU level. Last  November, French and German leaders pledged to increase the use of open-source technologies among government organizations as part of that push. Open-source software should be the “default” across Germany’s public sector, said Lenhard, a member of the Bundestag’s Committee on Digital Transformation and Government Modernization. “Public procurement is one of the critical points where we have to change,” said Kim van Sparrentak, a Dutch member of the European Parliament representing Group of the Greens/European Free Alliance. A “buy European” approach should be favored where possible, said van Sparrentak, “not as prerequisite for all technologies — because it’s maybe not possible yet — but for the critical aspects of government at least.” The state can also serve as a “valuable anchor client,” said Lenhard, supporting the growth of a wider ecosystem of European tech and service providers, which is currently dwarfed by the US tech sector. This would give businesses the ability to “plan demand better, [and] invest the money in their products so they become better and better,” she said. A 2025 report by Cigref — a non-profit that represents French businesses and public administrations — estimates that European organizations spend a total €265 billion on US software and service each year. Mirko Boehm, senior director for Community Development at the Linux Foundation Europe, said policy makers should “require that every major IT procurement includes an assessment of strategic dependency. “If a ministry in one of the member states signs a contract with a hyperscaler, that’s not just an IT decision, it’s an industrial policy decision, a skills development decision, a technology transfer decision, and a digital sovereignty decision,” said Boehm. “These are all costs that are currently not considered in procurement.” Every euro invested in public sector procurement generates multiples more in subsequent economic activity, said Boeh, a benefit that Europe misses out on by purchasing most of its technologies from US tech companies. “When European governments, for example, purchase from non-European hyperscalers, that multiplier effect builds in their innovation ecosystem — not in ours,” said Boehm. “The jobs, the supplier networks, the research and development investments, the tax base — all of that compounds somewhere else.” Boehm said open-source technologies can provide an alternative for European organizations to “retain this econonic multiplier. “The dependency that we currently see is basically a choice, a choice we made. It’s not an inevitability,” he said. “We have the options…. We need a political will.”