European Union (EU) countries will not be able to completely abandon American digital technologies and will remain dependent on them in the coming years, Politico reported, whose journalists interviewed representatives of the member states.
“Complete technological “decoupling“ from the United States is not a realistic goal and does not meet Europe's broad strategic interests“, said Lithuanian Minister of Economy and Innovation Edvinas Griksas in response to the newspaper's inquiry.
The German government shares this opinion: a spokesman for the Ministry of Digitalization and Modernization of the country noted that “complete replacement of foreign digital services is neither possible nor necessary“. A representative of the Finnish Ministry of Finance expressed the opinion that the abandonment of American services is possible, but not in the near future.
Most European governments use American software. Two-thirds of the cloud services market in Europe is controlled by American companies Google, Microsoft and Amazon. Most European companies also use software created in the United States. Among European countries, Ireland, Finland and Sweden are the most dependent on American software.
Meanwhile, some EU countries, including Finland, were exploring scenarios for a complete shutdown of American services by Washington. France took a step towards abandoning American software by creating its own equivalent of the videoconferencing services Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
In total, the newspaper's journalists sent inquiries to the governments of 27 countries. The publication received responses from the authorities of Germany, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ireland, Belgium and Luxembourg.