Key takeaways:
Microsoft and its leadership refrained from endorsing Donald Trump during the 2024 campaign, unlike some other major tech companies.
However, European governments and enterprises are increasingly breaking ties with Microsoft products in favor of open-source alternatives.
Experts say such a transition can be largely attributed to Trump’s hostile policy towards Europe, which sparked digital sovereignty efforts.
Microsoft has reiterated its digital commitments, but it is yet to be seen if that’s enough to assuage concerns over dependency on US tech.
This is a bit about Microsoft being Microsoft, but it is also about USA government having control and access of EU data.
Which the big tech were doing long before the US government decided to use it themselves.
Microsoft aren’t casualties of Trump here… Their own greed and data harvesting pushed that as much, if not more.
I’ve worked my whole career in European tech and I’ve never heard the term sovereignty as much as since 2025. There was an undercurrent certainly, and people were keenly aware that technically the US government could look at their data whenever they felt like it, but it was still natural to plop your infrastructure on AWS or azure and not think too much about it.
Things have really accelerated since he took office, first in the public sector then in the private sector. The burden of proof has kind of reversed, I’ve started hearing a lot of “what specific service do you need on AWS that you can’t have on a European server” whereas it used to be “why don’t we just take AWS”.