France has begun to retire Windows from its administration. It is the beginning of his divorce from Microsoft, Google and Amazon

Digital sovereignty in Europe has gone from being a theoretical concept to something increasingly tangible and desirable with respect to the technology we consume. It is no longer just a trend that is increasingly more individual people are tryingbut has also become an object of desire for administrations and companies. The path to becoming independent from big tech in the United States is not easy and while there are startups like Mistral who gets rich in the processthere is a state that has decided to take a brave step forward: France.

In a global environment where data and infrastructure are geopolitical weapons, the French Government, through the Interministerial Directorate for Digital (DINUM), has launched an aggressive roadmap to regain control over their information systems, thus reducing the hegemony of non-EU technological solutions. And it has started with Windows.

The decision. In a high-level inter-ministerial seminar, DINUM together with ANSSI, the State Purchasing Directorate and the DGE formalized the most ambitious commitment to digital sovereignty adopted to date by a Western European power. Or what is the same: France wants to exit the American technological ecosystem in a systematic, planned way and with specific deadlines. It is not an experiment, it is state policy.

The guideline is clear: map and reduce dependence on technology suppliers from outside the EU. The measure is not a veto but rather a mandatory transition towards a model where public administration must prioritize local or open source solutions, especially in critical services and sensitive data processing. As has declared the Minister of Action and Public Accounts David Amiel: “ We can no longer accept that our data, our infrastructure and our strategic decisions depend on solutions whose rules, prices, evolution and risks we do not control.”

Why is it important. From a systems engineering and cybersecurity point of view, the measure is vital for issues such as protecting against Cloud Act of the United States, the law that allows its authorities to access data stored in American companies regardless of where the servers are located. On the other hand, it guarantees that the state maintains its necessary technical capabilities to operate its own infrastructure without depending on proprietary “black boxes” and to heal itself in the event of a change in conditions or other external problems.

But this phased migration is much more than an OS change: it involves dismantling the entire associated ecosystem, certificates and applications designed for Windows. It means rebuilding the digital foundations of the state from the roots so that they function with total autonomy and without foreign parts, without citizens noticing the change on the surface.

Context. Our daily personal, professional and bureaucratic lives live in an ecosystem governed by hyperscalersthose technology companies like Microsoft, Google or Amazon that dominate storage and cloud computing. This mention is not random: they alone eat more than 60% of the cloud cake, as Statista collects. The increase in cyber threats and the US technological monopoly in the West and its increasingly invasive turn to the privacy of others have done the rest.

France has been maturing the doctrine for years “Cloud au Center“. While the ANSSI audited the dependencies on critical infrastructures, its sovereign cloud was being forged as a real alternative. In addition, the European regulatory framework, with the NIS2 directive wave cyber resilience lawhas created the ideal breeding ground. With tools like TchapVisio, FranceTransfert and Socle Numérique (alternatives to WhatsApp, Teams, WeTransfer or Microsoft 365, respectively) France no longer only has a plan, but a real operational base on which to scale.

The plan towards sovereignty. It is neither a toast to the sun nor does it have vague and diffuse measurements or distant dates, but concrete, tangible movements and which is either already being implemented or is scheduled to be completed before the end of the year:

• DINUM abandons Windows and migrates its jobs to Linux. It is the first central State agency to do so. Already underway.
• Migration of 80,000 agents from the Caisse Nationale d’Assurance Maladie (equivalent to Social Security) to sovereign tools: Tchap, Visio and FranceTransfert. Already underway.
• Migration of the health data platform to a reliable European solution. Scheduled for the end of 2026.
• Duties for each ministry: present a dependency reduction plan, which includes databases, antivirus, AI or collaborative tools. For this fall.

Yes, but. France has a basic skeleton and a legal framework, as well as public-private coalitions to accelerate the transition through concrete and measurable public commitments. But it won’t be easy. Exiting Windows involves disassembling Active Directory and what is behind it, something that costs a lot of time and money. And migrating 80,000 agents to new tools is not so much a technology problem but rather a problem of implementing new management.

Also, go out where. Many European solutions still do not reach the integration, ease of use and capacity (especially in AI) of American big tech, which implies a step backwards in terms of quality. But even if it were possible, moving from a proprietary infrastructure to a sovereign one implies an enormous investment in time, personnel training and data migration. Finally, maintaining and evolving our own infrastructure requires specialized and experienced personnel in a market where talent is scarce and expensive.

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Cover | Clint Patterson and Arno Senoner