France to ditch American video conferencing services

Paris is planning to replace Teams and Zoom with a locally developed app, bucking the EU’s heavy reliance on US technology, a senior state official has said

The French authorities plan to phase out American videoconferencing services, such as Teams and Zoom, within a year and replace them with a domestically developed app, Minister Delegate for the Civil Service David Amiel said on Saturday. The country needs to “detoxify itself” from US technology, he explained.

The bulk of European data is stored on American cloud services, with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google controlling over two-thirds of the market, while US-based artificial intelligence majors dominate the recently emerged AI sector. Earlier this month, the European Parliament reported that the bloc depends on non-EU countries for more than 80% of its digital products, services, infrastructure, and intellectual property.

“We have become dependent on Teams and Zoom,” Amiel said in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche, highlighting that the state needs “to ensure the security of our communications in all circumstances.”

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He stated that the new app, called Visio, will be rolled out within the French government by 2027, and that Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu is expected to issue a circular to formalize the move.

The dominance of US tech services has been brought into focus over the past year as transatlantic tensions have steadily risen during US President Donald Trump’s first year back in office. Repeated tariff threats and subsequent vows to acquire Greenland have raised questions about the reliability of US support, prompting the EU to reassess its reliance on its long-standing ally,

Last year, media reports emerged that European governments and companies began rethinking their dependence on major US cloud providers, citing concerns about data sovereignty, privacy, and potential political leverage, and prompting moves toward homegrown alternatives.

Earlier this year, the director of the Center for Cybersecurity Belgium, Miguel De Bruycker, claimed that the EU has “lost the internet” because storing data fully within the bloc is now impossible due to the dominance of American technology companies. The official added that EU regulation on artificial intelligence was blocking innovation that might improve the situation.