France Tries to Break Free from Microsoft Dominance

France is taking steps to reduce its dependence on non-European technology in government computers. On April 8, 2026, the Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM) announced that it would switch its workstations from Windows to Linux and coordinate a wider government plan to cut down on reliance on non-European tech. Every ministry and public operator must map their weak points and file a plan by autumn covering various software and equipment.

The move is not just symbolic, but rather a procurement with a deadline. David Amiel, France's public action minister, said the state could no longer just note its dependence on non-European technology and had to break free from it. The official DINUM statement went further, saying that France wants less exposure to tools whose rules and prices it can't set, and whose risks and future it can't predict.

The 2.5 million figure mentioned in the report actually belongs mainly to another part of the same strategy. In January, France's finance ministry said the government would roll out Visio, a DINUM-built video-conferencing tool, across state services by 2027, replacing a mix of Teams, Zoom, GoTo Meeting and Webex.

France already has a working example to follow. Its Gendarmerie has used GendBuntu, an Ubuntu-based operating system, since 2008. Canonical's case study on the project said the force upgraded 85,000 PCs to Ubuntu Desktop and saved about two million euros a year in licence fees.

Germany's northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, is also taking steps to reduce its reliance on Microsoft software. By late 2025, it had moved close to 80% of its administrative desktops outside the tax administration to LibreOffice, avoiding more than 15 million euros in annual licence costs.

The European Parliament has also taken a step towards reducing its dependence on non-European technology. On June 4, 2026, it switched the default search engine on its internal Firefox and Edge browsers from Google to Qwant.