Two of Denmark’s biggest municipalities are ending their use of Microsoft systems in the latest move by European governments away from US Big Tech companies.
Henrik Appel Espersen, the chairman of Copenhagen’s audit committee, told newspaper Politiken that the council is making the decision to move away from Microsoft Office programmes due to the economy and the "monopoly-like" control of the company.
Plus, the foreign policy situation with US President Donald Trump has made the problem "more topical," Espersen added.
The same decision was made in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-biggest municipality, where, according to the newspaper, a German system has already replaced Microsoft technology.
Euronews Next contacted both municipalities to independently verify local reporting.
The reported moves from local governments in Denmark follows a public debate in the Netherlands that saw the Dutch parliament approve a series of motions earlier this year to build a digital cloud and reduce its dependence on US cloud technology.
There are concerns from experts who previously told Euronews Next that the Trump administration could either compel tech companies to provide the US with Dutch data or force them to no longer provide cloud services to Europe, which could cause massive disruptions to public services.
'No one should be forced to use the services of tech giants'
The debate on US Big Tech influence has been going on for some time in Denmark, based on the results of an expert panel looking into their influence.
The Danish expert group on tech giants released a report in December 2024 that called for Big Tech alternatives in Europe to "be able to emerge and grow large".
"No one should be forced to use the services of tech giants to get information and participate in social, cultural, and democratic communities," the report said.
It also asked for an "overview" of the tech giants’ influence on digital infrastructure in Denmark, saying that the public sector and education systems should not be "dependent" on the services of tech giants.
"We need to fence in the tech giants," Morten Bodskov, Denmark’s minister of business and industry, said in a statement at the time.
"If we only use their solutions, it makes our society extremely vulnerable in a world that is changing with pressure from great powers, geopolitical tensions, and a technology race. That is why we must develop our own solutions".
Euronews Next followed up with the panel of experts and the Danish government to see whether this inquiry has been started or promised but did not receive a reply at the time of publication.
Future EU cloud laws in the works
Another alternative for Denmark, the Netherlands, and other states concerned about the influence of US Big Tech companies is EU-wide initiatives that are in the works.
The European Commission is holding public consultations until July 3 on the future of cloud legislation in the bloc to "address Europe’s gap in cloud and AI infrastructure capacity".
The act will eventually address research and innovation to accelerate data centres for cloud and AI, private investment in sustainable cloud and AI capacity, and increasing the "secure processing capacity" of EU-based cloud providers.
Mario Draghi’s 2024 report on the state of Europe’s competitiveness noted that the bloc has to "enhance technological infrastructure and reduce dependencies" on non-EU cloud service providers.
