France’s deepening reliance on US tech giants is raising alarms about digital sovereignty and exposing public data to foreign jurisdictions.
In a French Senate report on economic and digital sovereignty, Senators accused the French State of “political fault”. That was in regard to outsourcing essential data infrastructure to US companies subject to US extraterritorial laws, including Microsoft, despite repeated warnings and alternatives.
“France is subject to US extraterritorial law,” the report stated, warning that public data, including from health, education and critical sectors, was exposed to foreign surveillance under US legislation such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) and the Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD).
This legislation allowed the US Government to demand that companies subject to US law disclose the data they stored, simply by obtaining a judge’s authorisation.
The Senate report cited Microsoft France’s legal director, Anton Carniaux, as admitting the company could not guarantee that French data it hosted would not be handed over to foreign authorities.
“Carniaux … was asked by the [French Senate] commission to guarantee that French citizens’ data hosted by Microsoft would never be transmitted to foreign authorities without the agreement of the French authorities. He replied: ‘No, I can’t guarantee that,'” the report stated.
In March 2025, the Ministry of Education signed a €74 million deal with a US company for equipping its departments and universities.
The country’s elite school for engineers, École Polytechnique, also decided earlier this year to move the school’s IT system to Microsoft.
That was done despite earlier instructions from the French Government urging school districts to avoid deploying Microsoft or Google collaborative tools due to sovereignty risks.
The CNLL (National Council for Free Software) warned that “legal, technical, and strategic risks are being deliberately ignored.”
Speaking with Brussels Signal on July 16, French MP Philippe Latombe blames France’s “bureaucratic inertia”.
“There is no real connection between political leaders and French civil servants, who think they will remain in their posts indefinitely. This creates bureaucratic inertia. They secured early contracts easily because they have always been there, which leads to habitual reliance by public buyers,” he said.
In their report, the French Senate accused the government of systematically discrediting European alternatives, claiming they were “too costly” or “not efficient enough”.
“The commission of inquiry found that European solutions were systematically denigrated by the government, wrongly judged to be too costly or inefficient,” the report read.
For Latombe, France needs to move beyond price, and consider other factors like the fact that French companies contribute to the national social system, such as social security contributions, taxes.
In November last year, Latombe criticised the US-EU Data Privacy Framework (DPF) deal, saying it no longer served EU interests due to the US president’s “impulsive” nature.
The DPF was designed to make it easier for companies to transfer personal data such as names, addresses and browsing history from the EU to the US.
Another striking example comes from the cybersecurity sector.
In early 2025, the French cybersecurity firm VADE merged with Germany’s Hornet Security, forming what appeared to be a promising EU-based leader in international cloud security. However, just a year later, in March 2025, US company Proofpoint acquired the entire Hornetsecurity Group.
“As a result, there is no longer a fully French solution in this strategic sector”, denounced Latombe.
While France deepened its digital dependency, other European nations have been pushing back.
In June 2025, Denmark’s Minister for Digitalisation, Caroline Stage Olsen, announced a full pivot away from Microsoft, replacing it with LibreOffice, a Berlin-based open-source alternative.
Citing concerns over financial cost, market dominance and political tension with Washington, Denmark’s two largest cities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, had already begun ditching Microsoft earlier this year.
EC is run by bureaucrats who believe the market should remain fully open, with no preference for national or EU suppliers
Although this shift marked a growing European movement toward technological emancipation, a 2025 report by Astéres painted a bleak picture of the overall situation.
Europe sends €265 billion a year straight to US companies, fuelling almost 2 million jobs in the US.
Meanwhile, Europe was left economically dependent, digitally exposed and strategically weak.
“If 15 per cent of that spending stayed in Europe by 2035, it would create over 500,000 jobs here,” the Senate report estimated.
The Asteres report warned: “If the US ever threatens to cut Europe off from its cloud services, it would hold extraordinary leverage to impose its commercial conditions.”
When it comes to digital sovereignty, the European Commission is seen as the main obstacle, despite growing support among Member States.
“Germany and the Netherlands have understood that something must be done, and the European Parliament is also on board. But the European Commission is resistant: it is run by bureaucrats who believe the market should remain fully open, with no preference for national or EU suppliers,” Latombe said.
“Europe is lagging and is letting itself be overtaken. Ironically, Trump’s blunt and aggressive approach had the positive effect of waking Europe up, even if it’s still not enough,” he added.
On June 11, 2025, the European Parliament published a report on the European Union’s technological sovereignty and digital infrastructure, warning that the EU remains heavily reliant on foreign technologies.
The report shows that US companies hold approximately 69 per cent of the cloud infrastructure market share in Europe, while EU suppliers hold only 13 per cent.
The report also highlighted that 92 per cent of the West’s data is stored in the United States, on infrastructure owned and operated by American firms.