• Austria’s Economics Ministry has migrated to a European open-source collaboration platform and other EU states look set to follow suit  
• The upfront and proactive EuroStack Initiative is “to organise action, not just talk” and will work to dismantle de facto US “digital colonisation”
• European reliance on primarily US-based, software and cloud services “comes at a monumental economic cost” 
• US big tech companies and the current political administration are getting worried and reportedly applying diplomatic pressure 

Citing massive over-reliance on non-European technology, rising geopolitical tensions, the remorseless increase in cyberattacks by state-sponsored ‘bad actors’, and the urgent need to take command and control of AI before it is too late, Austria is in the vanguard of those member states of the European Union (EU) pushing hard for the development and adoption of a “European charter” on digital sovereignty.

Austria’s parliament in Vienna has taken a major step away from dependence on US big tech companies and has permitted the country’s Ministry of the Economy to migrate to Nextcloud, the open-source content collaboration platform company headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany. The Nextcloud suite of client-server software can be hosted either in the cloud or on premises and can scale up to millions of users. It supports 60 languages.

The move is not isolated. European governments, their agencies and other organisations (both public and private), together with commercial companies, are pivoting to European-owned and/or based open-source solution providers as they turn away from big tech in an effort to own and control their own data. Thus, Austria’s Economics Ministry has migrated 1,200 civil servants to a Nextcloud-based platform hosted on Austrian-based infrastructure. It looks as though Europe is readying itself to declare independence from US-based technology companies.

Many European companies are also joining the EuroStack Initiative, a not-for-profit foundation that is much more than just another self-regarding industry echo-chamber. Eurostack says its purpose is “to organise action, not just talk”. Its mission statement is simple – “Buy European, sell European, fund European." 

To put things into some perspective, a recent report (in French) from economic analysis organisation Asterès, referenced in a whitepaper by EuroStack in May 2025, quantifies Europe’s digital dependencies and it makes for grim reading. 

It states: “Europe’s reliance on non-European, primarily US-based, software and cloud services comes at a monumental economic cost… European businesses funnel €264bn annually to the US economy through their purchases of cloud and software services, a ‘digital bill’ that rivals Europe’s entire energy import bill (€360bn) and represents roughly 1.5% of the EU’s GDP – 1.5 times the total EU budget. This is not an abstract number; it represents a massive drain of value, jobs and, ultimately, strategic control.” 

The report also points out the reality of European lock-in to US technology and the concomitant “techflation” that is its malign twin. Price rises imposed by big tech companies on their European customers average 10% a year and “erodes European business competitiveness and underscores the dangers of relying on closed ecosystems where switching is difficult and costly.”

The report concludes, “We must build a sovereign, open and resilient digital future for Europe, based on our own values and capabilities.” 

Austria’s determination to plough its own sovereign data furrow is being mirrored in Germany, Denmark and several other EU member states as organisations seek to keep data storage and processing within national or regional European borders to ensure the most stringent security possible and full compliance with the EU's important and overarching General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). 

A further determination, and equally important factor, is to minimise risks from potential surveillance on the part of foreign commercial interests and government agencies. Here, open-source software is regarded as greatly important because it combines ease and speed of development with increased security whilst providing companies and governments with “greater control over their applications, their data and their destiny while benefitting from global collaboration,” notes the report.

Support for the establishment of a digital sovereignty fund to help boost European technology providers is also rising quickly, while hopes are that Europe will be able to cut its dependency on US big tech by 40% by 2030. The Eurostack Doctrine states that “current dependence [on non-European technology] is a critical risk… quantified in billions of euros and millions of jobs. It confirms our critique that Europe risks becoming a ‘digital colony’, economically subservient in the critical digital domain.” 

Many will have observed that it already is.

On 18 November in Berlin, Germany, the European Digital Sovereignty Summit will convene under the auspices of the German and French ministries of digital development and economy. It will focus on loosening the ties that bind Europe to US big tech firms while strengthening Europe’s digital autonomy and resilience. Rumours abound that the US authorities are now so worried about Europe’s determination to take its digital destiny into its own hands that heavy US diplomatic pressure is being applied in efforts to keep the “independence” rhetoric down to “acceptable” levels. 

And they say Americans don’t do irony.

– Martyn Warwick, Editor in Chief, TelecomTV