Microsoft Outage Fuels European Calls for Tech Independence from the US

The global outage that hit Microsoft services and affected millions of users in dozens of countries has once again highlighted Europe's heavy reliance on American technology companies, sparking a new wave of calls to strengthen European digital sovereignty and develop local infrastructure, particularly in cloud computing, chip manufacturing and development, and artificial intelligence.

While the three main EU institutions—the European Commission, the Council of the EU, and the European Parliament—largely continued their work as normal, the disruption, which lasted approximately 24 hours and impacted Outlook email, Teams messaging, and Copilot AI services, raised renewed questions about the ability of European governments and businesses to continue operating if the digital services they depend on fail.

The European Commission stated that the impact of the outage on its systems was very limited, restricted to slow performance in SharePoint, noting that Outlook and Teams continued to operate normally. The Council of the EU reported that its email and messaging services were unaffected, while the European Parliament announced it had not been impacted by the outage but remained monitoring the situation.

Outage reports began emerging on Thursday evening, with the Downdetector website recording a spike in user reports regarding issues with Microsoft services in 74 countries. According to Politico, the number of reports related solely to the Outlook service reached approximately 140,000 at the peak of the disruption.

On Friday, Microsoft said that the restoration of services was proceeding at varying speeds and that it had found no indications of malicious activity behind the outage.

European Criticisms
The outage triggered criticism and renewed calls to reduce European dependence on American technology providers, coinciding with a meeting of leaders from the 27 EU member states in Dublin, Ireland, to discuss the future of artificial intelligence in the first summit dedicated to this topic at the leader level.

Arthur Mensch, CEO of the French AI company Mistral, stated that only 20% of digital services in Europe run on European infrastructure. He called for redirecting funds spent by European countries on foreign technology, whether American or Chinese, toward developing infrastructure under their control and financing research and development within the continent.

Mensch made these remarks during his participation in the European leaders' meeting on Friday, noting that Europe needs to accelerate its steps in this area amid global competition in developing AI technologies.

The French official did not directly address the Microsoft outage, but the disruption affected several officials and tech sector leaders attending the meeting after tools used in their daily work failed.

French President Emmanuel Macron emphasized the need to build technological independence within Europe in a post on the X platform following the meeting, stating: "Our independence cannot be entrusted to external parties; it must be built here in Europe." He added that the continent possesses the necessary assets to compete in the field of artificial intelligence but warned against wasting time.

Accelerating Licenses and Investments
A European diplomat who participated in the leaders' talks told Politico magazine that the bloc needs to speed up procedures related to licensing and investments to enable it to compete in global markets and achieve technological sovereignty.

Digital sovereignty, encompassing control over cloud computing services, chips, and models powering AI applications, is one of the key files in the second term of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and it topped the agenda of the EU leaders' meeting in Dublin.

Finnish Member of the European Parliament Urpa Sala stated that Europe has "entrusted a very large part of its digital infrastructure to non-EU entities," calling for government contracts to directly support European technology.

Tech sector officials warned of the risks arising from concentrating digital infrastructure among a limited number of global companies, according to Politico.

Sebastien Tualati, Secretary General of the Alliance of Small and Medium Digital Enterprises, said the Microsoft outage serves as a reminder of the systemic risks resulting from concentrating digital infrastructure in the hands of a few global tech giants.

In Britain, Victoria Collins, the Liberal Democrats' spokesperson for technology, said the outage demonstrated the need for a digital sovereignty strategy, calling for urgent action to end reliance on a handful of companies.

In Germany, Johannes Schätzl, a Member of Parliament from the Social Democratic Party, said the outage raises questions about government procurement, stressing that digital sovereignty should be measured by the capacity of institutions to continue working even during widespread outages of this nature.

Reliance on American Technology
European concerns are not limited to technical failures but extend to strategic reliance on American companies for operating essential digital services, amid growing anxiety that the administration of US President Donald Trump might use this dependence as political leverage.

Calls in Europe to reduce reliance on American technology providers have strengthened over the past two years. A major outage affecting Amazon Web Services last October also revived discussions on the necessity of building independent European digital capabilities.

The German state of Schleswig-Holstein took a step in this direction in 2025 when it migrated approximately 40,000 email mailboxes from Microsoft Exchange and Outlook services to open-source alternatives.

Derek Schröder, the state's Minister for Digital Transformation, said that technical disruptions should be taken seriously, regardless of whether institutions rely on open-source software or products from specific companies, emphasizing the need for them to possess the capability to intervene themselves to resolve problems when they occur.