European governments and organizations have increased efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. technology firms since the start of Donald Trump's second administration. The European Commission launched official long-term plans to reduce this dependence.
Several European digital sovereignty initiatives began before this period. Marietje Schaake, non-resident fellow at Stanford University's Cyber Policy Center and former member of the European Parliament, said, "The aggressive policies by the Trump administration, attacking international law, as well as the EU and democratic principles, has led to several wake-up calls." The Trump administration has publicly criticized European digital technology regulations.
A recent European Parliament report states that U.S.-based companies maintain dominant control across most layers of Europe's digital infrastructure. The European Parliament changed the default search engine on its devices from Google to Qwant. An open-source document platform from more than a dozen European technology companies named Euro-Office is scheduled to launch, and Eurosky functions as an interoperable alternative to Bluesky operating on the AT Protocol.
Finnish officials declined to store election data on Amazon cloud services. The registry operator for Belgium's .be top-level domain plans to migrate from Amazon Web Services. U.S. sanctions against individuals connected to the International Criminal Court have accelerated technology transition discussions, and the court discontinued its use of Microsoft technology. A Bavarian state minister said, "We no longer have time to cheaply discuss the importance of digital sovereignty—given the geopolitical situation, we need to get from talking to doing." Schaake said, "Citizens, companies, and organizations are energized to take their digital future into their own hands. Untangled from billionaire interests as well as Trump's policies."