Key Takeaways:

  • Massive European Microsoft Exodus: Denmark, Germany, France, Italy, and Austria migrate 800,000+ government workstations from Windows and Office to open-source alternatives like LibreOffice and Linux, driven by digital sovereignty concerns and vendor lock-in
  • U.S. Cloud Act and Data Sovereignty Risks: Microsoft confirmed under oath that European data stored in EU datacenters remains vulnerable to U.S. government access requests, prompting governments to reclaim control over critical digital infrastructure
  • Tens of Millions in Cost Savings: Schleswig-Holstein saves tens of millions on Linux migration, France’s Toulouse documents €1.8M savings over three years, Italy’s Defense Ministry projects €29M savings, with SaaS price increases averaging 73% across vendors in 2023
  • EU Regulatory Pressure on Microsoft: European Commission antitrust investigations, UK Competition and Markets Authority probes, and Interoperable Europe Act now require public sector to consider open-source alternatives first, challenging Microsoft’s 80% market dominance
  • Vendor Lock-In Breaking Point: Microsoft’s 15% price increases, forced Windows 10 upgrade cycles, and anti-competitive Azure licensing terms push governments and enterprises to overcome switching costs and embrace LibreOffice, Linux, and open-source productivity tools

 

The headlines keep coming. Denmark ditches Windows and Office. Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein eliminates Microsoft from 30,000 government computers. France moves 500,000 workstations to LibreOffice. Italy’s military transitions 150,000 PCs to open source. Austria completes a four-year migration away from Microsoft Office across its entire armed forces.

This isn’t lip service. This is a movement.

Across Europe, governments are making a calculated exit from Microsoft’s ecosystem, and they’re doing it for reasons that go far beyond budget spreadsheets and software preferences. They’re reclaiming control over their digital infrastructure, refusing to accept vendor lock-in as an inevitability, and pushing back against relentless price increases that have become the new normal in enterprise software.

The Sovereignty Imperative

Digital sovereignty has evolved from a buzzword into a strategic priority. At its core, it means something straightforward: the ability of a state to independently manage its digital assets, infrastructure, and data without undue reliance on foreign entities or commercial suppliers.

Denmark’s Digitalization Minister Caroline Stage put it bluntly: “We must never make ourselves so dependent on so few that we can no longer act freely. Too much public digital infrastructure is currently tied up with very few foreign suppliers. This makes us vulnerable.”

She’s not exaggerating. When Microsoft temporarily restricted email access for the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor, reportedly following U.S. sanctions, it sent a clear message: relying on American tech giants means your critical systems can be shut down by decisions made in Washington, not in your own capital.

The U.S. Cloud Act compounds these concerns. This legislation requires American companies to comply with U.S. government data requests, even when that data is stored on servers in Europe. Microsoft’s own lawyer confirmed this under oath in the French Senate in June 2025, admitting he cannot guarantee that French data stored in European Microsoft datacenters is safe from silent U.S. government access.

For European governments, this creates an unacceptable risk. German MEP Alexandra Geese, a key architect of the EU’s Digital Services Act, warned at the Nextcloud Summit in Munich that “Europe risks being blackmailed by both American and Chinese tech giants.”

The Lock-In Problem

Let’s get real: vendor lock-in isn’t an accident, it’s by design. Microsoft’s internal memo from 1997, quoted by the European Commission in its antitrust decision, spelled it out explicitly: “The Windows API is so broad, so deep, and so functional that most ISVs would be crazy not to use it. And it is so deeply embedded in the source code of many Windows apps that there is a huge switching cost to using a different operating system instead.”

That switching cost is real. Organizations face compatibility issues with proprietary file formats. They’ve built workflows around Microsoft-specific features. Employees have muscle memory trained on Office products. Migration means data transformation, retraining staff, and managing the inevitable friction of change.

But staying put has its own escalating costs. According to Vertice’s 2023 SaaS Inflation Index, 73% of SaaS vendors raised prices that year. Microsoft increased prices by 15%. HubSpot went up 12%. Overall SaaS spending jumped 8.8% — more than double the rate of consumer inflation.

These aren’t one-time adjustments. They’re part of a pattern. Microsoft raised Dynamics 365 prices by 10% in 2024. Azure costs went up. Windows 10’s end-of-support in late 2025 would have forced expensive hardware upgrades across government fleets, unless organizations paid Microsoft for extended security updates.

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority found that Microsoft’s cloud licensing terms make it more expensive to run Microsoft software on competing platforms like AWS or Google Cloud, effectively steering customers toward Azure. The European Commission opened formal investigations into these practices. AWS and Google have filed complaints alleging anti-competitive behavior.

When you’re locked in, the vendor sets the terms. And those terms keep getting worse.

The Financial Case for Open Source

Schleswig-Holstein expects to save tens of millions of euros by switching to Linux, LibreOffice, and Open-Xchange. Denmark anticipates similar financial benefits, especially by avoiding the expense of updating aging Windows 10 systems. The French city of Toulouse documented savings of €1.8 million over three years after migrating 90% of its desktops to LibreOffice. Italy’s Ministry of Defense projected savings of up to €29 million by replacing Microsoft Office across its operations.

These aren’t trivial sums for public sector budgets already under strain. But the savings go beyond licensing fees. Open-source software can run on older hardware, extending the useful life of existing equipment. It eliminates the forced upgrade cycles that come with proprietary software. And it creates opportunities for local IT jobs — governments invest in internal capability and support rather than sending money to Redmond.

The economic argument becomes even more compelling when considering the total cost of ownership. While proprietary software appears cheaper upfront, especially when bundled into “comprehensive” enterprise agreements, the long-term costs include not just licenses but also the price of dependency: inability to negotiate, forced feature adoption, and limited alternatives when the vendor changes terms.

The Movement Is Spreading

This isn’t just Denmark and Germany. The pattern is clear across the continent:

France: Eleven ministries have installed LibreOffice on 500,000 workstations. The National Gendarmerie has run Linux successfully for over fifteen years. Multiple government agencies have standardized on open-source productivity tools, including the Tax Agency, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Agriculture.

Italy: The Ministry of Defense completed one of Europe’s largest open-source migrations, transitioning 150,000 PCs to LibreOffice and the Open Document Format. Regional governments in Emilia Romagna, Perugia, Trento, and Bolzano have followed suit. Italian procurement law now requires public administrations to consider reused or free software before committing to proprietary licenses.

Austria: The Austrian Armed Forces removed Microsoft Office from all 16,000 military computers, replacing it with LibreOffice after a carefully planned four-year transition. The military has contributed the equivalent of five years of development time back to the LibreOffice project, funding improvements that benefit the entire open-source community.

Spain: Barcelona has invested heavily in open-source software as part of its broader digital strategy. The government of Extremadura confirmed thousands of PCs in its healthcare system run open-source office applications.

Germany: Beyond Schleswig-Holstein, Munich’s original LiMux project, despite its eventual reversal due to political pressure, saved €11.7 million and demonstrated the viability of large-scale migration. Other German regions continue to evaluate and implement open-source strategies.

Denmark’s two largest municipalities, Copenhagen and Aarhus, have already announced their intentions to phase out Microsoft systems, citing financial concerns, market dominance, and geopolitical tensions. When Copenhagen’s audit committee chair Henrik Appel Espersen explained the decision to media, he cited both Microsoft’s grip on the market and tensions between the U.S. and Denmark during Trump’s first presidency, including the bizarre episode when Trump attempted to purchase Greenland, part of the Danish Kingdom.

The Challenges Are Real

This isn’t easy. Munich’s experience proves that. The city’s celebrated LiMux project was ultimately rolled back in 2017 amid user complaints, political lobbying, and the complexity of maintaining parallel systems. Change management failures, inadequate training, and incomplete integration with essential features doomed what should have been a showcase for municipal digital independence.

The lesson isn’t that open source doesn’t work; it’s that successful transitions require serious commitment. Denmark’s Caroline Stage acknowledged this reality: “If everything goes as expected, all employees will be on an open-source solution during the autumn,” she told media, while noting that the government retains the option to pause or reverse course if technical challenges prove insurmountable.

Not surprisingly, compatibility issues remain problematic. LibreOffice handles Microsoft formats well, but complex documents with intricate formatting or advanced macros can still create problems. Organizations with extensive external collaboration face friction when partners expect .docx files or specific Microsoft features.

Training takes time and resources. Employees accustomed to Microsoft products need support during the transition. IT departments must build new expertise. The psychological resistance to change, what LibreOffice co-founder Italo Vignoli calls “addiction” to Microsoft, can’t be dismissed.

But success stories outnumber failures. France’s Gendarmerie, Vienna’s gradual transition, sustained implementations in Toulouse, South Tyrol, Kerala, and Norwegian municipalities all demonstrate that with proper planning, political support, and adequate training, these migrations work.

The Regulatory Context

The European Union’s policy environment increasingly supports this shift. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) raises serious questions about using American cloud services subject to U.S. surveillance laws. The Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act emphasize fairness, competition, and user empowerment in digital markets.

The Interoperable Europe Act, which took effect in 2024, now requires public sector bodies to consider open-source alternatives first, ensuring interoperability within and across borders. This isn’t just guidance; it’s a legal obligation.

Meanwhile, regulators are actively investigating Microsoft’s business practices. The European Commission accepted commitments from Microsoft in September 2025 to address competition concerns around Teams bundling, but broader probes continue. The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is considering designating Microsoft as a firm with “strategic market status,” enabling stricter conduct rules. The FTC in the United States has opened investigations into Microsoft’s AI and cloud operations.

These regulatory pressures aren’t about punishing Microsoft for being successful, they’re about preventing the abuse of dominant market position. When 80% of the global market for email and authoring tools belongs to one company, when proprietary file formats create artificial barriers to competition, when licensing terms deliberately favor a vendor’s own cloud platform over competitors, that’s the kind of market failure antitrust law exists to address.

What This Means Beyond Government

If entire national governments can break free from Microsoft’s ecosystem, what does that say about the rest of us?

The same dynamics apply at smaller scales. Organizations of all sizes face vendor lock-in. They watch prices creep upward year after year. They accept limitations and forced upgrades because switching feels too risky, too expensive, too complicated. My lived experience confirms this. When my small business Microsoft Office Suite membership renewed this year, the price went from $99 a year to $129 a year, and it instantly irritated me, as that’s no small increase. I walked away from that thinking about how even small business owners are held hostage by Microsoft, and how quickly the wanton and somewhat reckless raising of prices quickly erodes customer trust and loyalty. I suppose I need to suck it up my own self and make time to break free — and that’s really the biggest challenge. Staying is easier and less time-consuming, but at some point, consumers are going to say ‘enough’ and figure out that it’s really not all that difficult to change; you’ve just got to want it.

That aside, the calculus is changing. Open-source alternatives have matured dramatically. LibreOffice handles the vast majority of real-world productivity needs. Linux distributions are more polished and user-friendly than ever. Cloud-based tools reduce the importance of the underlying operating system. Cross-platform compatibility means you’re not married to a single ecosystem.

The lesson from Europe’s digital sovereignty movement isn’t that everyone should immediately dump Microsoft. It’s that dependency on any single vendor creates vulnerability — and that dependency is a choice, not a foregone conclusion.

Organizations should regularly evaluate alternatives. They should design systems with portability in mind. They should resist the siren song of “comprehensive” bundles that promise convenience but deliver lock-in. They should push back against price increases and unfavorable licensing terms.

The beauty of genuine competition is that it benefits everyone. When European governments demonstrate that viable alternatives exist, when they publicly document the savings and successes of their transitions, when they contribute development resources back to open-source projects, they create options that didn’t previously exist at scale.

Microsoft’s response to all this pressure is revealing. The company has revised cloud licensing terms, unbundled Teams from productivity suites (at least partially) and made concessions to European regulators. These changes happened because customers — big, important customers with actual alternatives — demanded them.

That’s how markets are supposed to work.

The Bottom Line

Digital sovereignty isn’t really about nationalism or anti-American sentiment, despite how some might frame it. It’s about control, resilience, and the fundamental question of who gets to set the terms for critical infrastructure.

European governments looked at their dependence on Microsoft and asked uncomfortable questions. What happens if political tensions escalate and the U.S. government demands access to our data? What happens when the vendor decides to raise prices by 15% and we have no choice but to pay? What happens when the software we depend on reaches end-of-life and we’re forced into expensive upgrade cycles we didn’t plan for?

They decided those risks were unacceptable. They decided that inertia — continuing with the status quo simply because it’s what they’ve always done—was more dangerous than the challenges of change.

The migrations aren’t perfect. The challenges are real. But the principle is sound: organizations should control their own digital destiny. They shouldn’t be hostages to vendor roadmaps, arbitrary price increases, or geopolitical considerations beyond their influence.

Denmark and Germany and France and Italy are proving it can be done. They’re showing that “we’ve always used Microsoft” isn’t a reason — it’s an excuse. They’re demonstrating that the switching costs, while real, aren’t insurmountable.

Most importantly, they’re sending a message to every technology vendor: lock-in has its limits. Price increases have consequences. And customers with alternatives will use them.

That’s not a threat. It’s just how free markets work when they’re actually free.

 

This article was originally published on LinkedIn.

 

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