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Europe gets serious about cutting digital umbilical cord with Uncle Sam's big tech (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 month ago by randomname@scribe.disroot.org to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk

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While Brussels champions policy initiatives and American tech giants market their own ‘sovereign’ solutions, a handful of public authorities in Austria, Germany, and France, alongside the International Criminal Court in The Hague, are taking concrete steps to regain control over their IT.

These cases provide a potential blueprint for a continent grappling with its technological autonomy, while simultaneously revealing the deep-seated legal and commercial challenges that make true independence so difficult to achieve.

The core of the problem lies in a direct and irreconcilable legal conflict. The US CLOUD Act of 2018 allows American authorities to compel US-based technology companies to provide requested data, regardless of where that data is stored globally. This places European organizations in a precarious position, as it directly clashes with Europe's own stringent privacy regulation, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

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[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The Dutch tax agency did the same, mostly because there are supposedly no sufficiently capable European alternatives.
(Worth specifying that it's specifically about the Office 365 suite, and not the software for handling tax returns)

[-] Bunbury@feddit.nl 5 points 1 month ago

And don’t forget that the Dutch digital ID was outsourced to a Dutch company that was now bought by a US company. The Dutch way for the government to digitally identify Dutch citizens is about to be in US hands.

[-] Humanius@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Afaik Solvinity, the company that takes care of he infrastructure behind DigiD and MijnOverheid, is on the verge of being bought by the US company Kyndryl. But it hasn't been sold yet.

Hypothetically the government could still stop it on the grounds of national interest. Though you can see how well that went with Nexperia..
With the government being "demissionair" however, idk if they will.

It would certainly draw the attention of America is we did.

[-] Bunbury@feddit.nl 3 points 1 month ago

Ah, I wasn’t aware that it wasn’t 100% done yet. Shame that I have 0 trust that they’ll do anything about this.

this post was submitted on 23 Dec 2025

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