Europe just crossed a threshold. On Tuesday, the French government made it official: Microsoft Teams and Zoom are out, replaced by the domestically built video conferencing platform Visio. This isn't a preference statement. It's a security mandate driven by what European officials see as an existential problem: the continent has become dangerously dependent on American technology controlled by an increasingly unpredictable administration. For builders, investors, and enterprise decision-makers, this marks the moment when digital sovereignty shifts from theoretical concern to operational reality.

This isn't abstract anymore. Last week, a Canadian judge on the International Criminal Court—Kimberly Prost—found her life essentially frozen. Her credit cards stopped working. Her Amazon account shut down. Why? The Trump administration added her to its sanctions list because she served on a chamber that authorized investigation of alleged US war crimes in Afghanistan. She can't shop online, wire money, or access services that touch the US financial system. As she told The Irish Times, the effect is paralyzing.

For European policymakers watching from Brussels, Berlin, and Paris, that single case crystallized what's been gnawing at them for months: relying this completely on American technology in an era of Trump administration unpredictability is a national security liability.

France just acted. The government announced it's replacing Microsoft Teams and Zoom with Visio, a domestically built platform, across all government agencies. French Minister for Civil Service and State Reform David Amiel framed it plainly: sovereignty requires control over your own communication infrastructure.

But this is just the visible part of a much larger shift that's been accelerating for weeks. The European Parliament voted January 22 to adopt a report directing the European Commission to identify where the EU can reduce its dependency on foreign tech providers. The numbers they cited are striking: the 27 EU member states rely on non-European countries for more than 80% of their digital products, services, and infrastructure. That's not a competitive disadvantage—it's a structural vulnerability.

Belgium's cybersecurity chief Miguel De Bruycker went further. In a recent Financial Times interview, he said Europe has essentially "lost the internet" to the United States. The US has hoarded the world's tech and financial systems. He said it's "currently impossible" to store data fully within Europe—every server, every database, every backup eventually connects to American infrastructure, which means it's potentially accessible to American law enforcement or intelligence agencies.

Here's the historical context that makes this moment different: concerns about digital sovereignty aren't new. They date back to 2001 when the US introduced the Patriot Act after September 11, which allowed intelligence agencies to surveil the world in unprecedented ways. Europeans complained then. In 2011, Microsoft acknowledged that as an American company, it could be forced to hand over European data in response to a secret government order. But it felt theoretical.

Then came 2013. Edward Snowden's leaks showed it wasn't theoretical at all. The NSA had been harvesting communications from European citizens systematically. Detailed proof of mass surveillance emerged. Europe protested, regulated (the GDPR in 2018), and... kept using American platforms anyway, because the alternatives didn't exist and the switching costs were too high.

What's changed in the last six months is the political calculation. Trump's return to office brought not just unpredictability in policy—it brought unpredictability in the exercise of that policy. He's threatened to invade NATO allies. He's weaponized sanctions against judges he disagrees with. He's proven willing to use American economic power as a blunt instrument. When that level of volatility is directed at your government officials or allies, suddenly a European alternative to Teams doesn't seem like a nice-to-have. It seems existential.

The market is responding faster than governments are moving. Websites like Switch-to-EU and European Alternatives have become de facto guides for individuals and organizations looking to migrate. They list open-source alternatives, European-built cloud services, sovereign communication platforms. The underlying message: you can get out of the US tech stack if you're willing to make the switch now.

But here's where timing matters differently for different audiences. For French government employees, the switch to Visio happens now—it's a mandate. For other EU member states, the Parliament directive is non-binding but politically pointed. For enterprises, the window is still open but closing. If you're a European bank, insurance company, or critical infrastructure operator, you have maybe 12-18 months before your government either requests or requires that you reduce US tech dependencies. That's not long enough to build everything from scratch, but it's long enough to commit capital and begin migration planning.

For investors, this is where it gets interesting. European governments are about to direct substantial capital toward building sovereign digital infrastructure. The EU Commission is already moving to bring technologies onto its own turf. That's billions in potential public funding for European startups and tech companies. The companies that win here aren't the ones with the slickest products—they're the ones positioned as trustworthy, European-controlled alternatives to Microsoft, Google, and Amazon cloud services.

The staffing implications are also real. If Europe is serious about building a parallel digital infrastructure, that requires thousands of engineers, infrastructure specialists, and security experts. Tech workers in Europe suddenly have a new category of employers—government-backed or government-preferred platforms—that didn't exist six months ago.

What happens next is clearer than the political noise might suggest. France's move creates a template. Other governments will follow, probably Germany and the Netherlands first, then spreading. You'll see mandates spread from communication platforms to cloud services to database systems. Each mandate triggers a small exodus from whichever US platform faces the ban. The question isn't whether this happens—it's how fast and how deep it goes.

Europe's digital sovereignty shift is no longer theoretical—it's policy with consequences. The France announcement creates a precedent that other EU governments will follow within months. For builders, this means European platforms suddenly have tailwinds they didn't before. For investors, this opens a new category: government-mandated alternatives. For decision-makers, the window to migrate is now measured in 12-18 months, not years. For professionals, it signals where skills will be in demand. The next threshold to watch: which other major platforms face government replacement mandates, and how quickly European alternatives can scale to meet the demand.