In a bold turn of phrase and deed, Paris has quietly told Silicon Valley “au revoir.” On January 26, 2026, France’s Ministry of Finance announced that by 2027, all public servants will switch from U.S. video apps like Microsoft Teams and Zoom to a homegrown platform called Visio.
No more license renewals for Teams, Zoom, Webex, or Meet, just one unified, French-built solution.
In one stroke, a long-discussed slogan “digital sovereignty” has leapt off the podium and into practice. This is not a press release; it’s a watershed moment: Europe’s second-biggest economy is wagering that, when it comes to critical infrastructure, it’s time to govern itself.
Digital sovereignty at a turning point
“Digital sovereignty” has become the EU’s new watchword, a declaration of independence from foreign tech hegemons. Over the past few years, it has surged from a niche policy to a headline priority, as EU leaders from Ursula von der Leyen to Emmanuel Macron have warned that Europe must control its own networks and data.
The phrase sounds grand, but what changed now is urgency. Americans’ own laws make the risks concrete: under the U.S. CLOUD Act, for example, U.S. authorities can demand data from any American platform, regardless of where it’s stored.
In practice, “jurisdiction follows ownership,” as one analyst noted: even data sitting on a Frankfurt server can be swept up by U.S. warrants if the service provider is American.
Edward Snowden’s revelations and murky court orders have long haunted Europe with the idea that a virtual meeting might be spied on from overseas. Now, with geopolitics in flux, U.S. political turns and global crises, that theoretical risk seems all too real.
The push has taken many forms. The EU has drafted cloud-certification rules demanding “sovereignty” guarantees and drafted data laws to keep Europeans’ information in Europe.
Member states debate mandating local clouds. Digital sovereignty has moved from virtue-signaling to something harder, actual infrastructure.
The Visio rollout: timeline and facts
France’s pivot is concrete and wide-ranging. Visio, developed by the government’s interministerial digital agency (DINUM), has been tested for about a year with some 40,000 regular users. It’s already being adopted piecemeal: CNRS (France’s national research center) will replace all its 34,000 Zoom seats by March 2026, covering 120,000 associated researchers.
By early 2026, the Defense Ministry, finance tax offices, health insurance, and other big agencies will be on Visio. The government now says every state department will use Visio as the default video tool by 2027, after which external conferencing licenses simply won’t be renewed.
The official rationale is familiar: a patchwork of Teams, Zoom, Webex, and friends “fragilises security” and creates hidden costs, dependencies, and interoperability headaches.
Visio is billed as a solution under full French control: it’s hosted on a certified “SecNumCloud” by Dassault-owned Outscale, built with ANSSI (France’s cyber agency) oversight, and even uses French AI for meeting transcription and captions.
The aim, in the minister’s words, is to “end the use of non-European solutions and guarantee the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications by relying on a powerful…sovereign tool”.
In short: no more data flying through American servers or falling under foreign laws.
There are financial perks, too. Officials point out that ditching pricey Teams and Zoom licenses will save money: roughly €1 million per year for every 100,000 users who shift off commercial tools. That’s not pocket change, even if it’s a rounding error in a €600 billion budget. In any case, for France, this isn’t just about cost – it’s about control.
Taken together, these facts show a very concrete policy timeline. In one meeting on Jan. 26, the state literally put a deadline on dependence: four years to shift the ENTIRE civil service. It’s one thing to talk about sovereignty in Brussels speeches, quite another to swap out the nation’s video chat app.
A broader European test case
France isn’t alone in flirting with this idea, but it’s the first to bet big. Other EU countries are eyeballing similar moves. In Denmark, parts of the public sector have already announced plans to phase out Microsoft’s software.
In Germany, the state of Schleswig-Holstein recently ditched Microsoft Office in favor of open-source alternatives. Even non-state bodies are joining the sovereignty club: the International Criminal Court said it will move its systems to a German-developed open-source platform (OpenDesk).
These are baby steps compared to France’s all-hands policy, but they reflect a shared unease about over-reliance on foreign tech.
Europe is also wrestling with headline-grabbing hiccups like last year’s massive cloud outages in the U.S., which left public agencies scrambling. The Visio announcement itself notes that Europe’s “overreliance on U.S. IT infrastructure” has been questioned after those failures.
And there are EU-wide initiatives underway, from the Gaia-X cloud alliance to tougher data localization rules – aimed at seeding local alternatives.
If France makes Visio work, it could serve as a proof of concept for others. Will a homegrown tool really run government communications smoothly? If yes, it might embolden policymakers in Brussels or Rome to push harder on local platforms. If not, it could slow the momentum.
For now, France’s move is a beacon: it shows that digital sovereignty can move beyond talk. Other nations will watch closely.
Sovereignty vs. innovation: a balancing act
No one seriously argues that keeping calls on Visio will magically end world unrest. Rather, this is a narrow, technical solution to a policy problem. On the other side, France will indeed have tighter control: all servers, encryption keys, and software updates are now under French (and EU) jurisdiction.
Public-sector IT teams can audit code, set security parameters, and avoid nasty surprises (say, a foreign court order) without jumping through transatlantic hoops.
Data stays where the politicians say it stays.
But what might be lost? For one, user experience and innovation often depend on scale. Big Tech’s video platforms have oceans of R&D behind them, from instant translation to seamless device-hopping, and millions of users giving feedback.
A new platform built from scratch may not match Teams’ polish or Zoom’s ubiquity overnight. (The French have even admitted an irony: naming it “Visio” risks confusion with Microsoft Visio, the longtime diagram app, hinting that branding and polish sometimes play second fiddle to strategy.)
There’s also the question of interoperability: how well will Visio meetings work when French officials Zoom into a partner country’s conference, or vice versa? Will France demand that foreign delegations install its app, or allow links to other networks? The devil is in the details.
Some critics fret that an insular approach could fragment standards. One EU paper urges that sovereignty shouldn’t mean isolation but rather a robust, open ecosystem.
If every country builds its own siloed cloud and chat service, the Internet risks reinventing wheels (and reinventing firewalls) in every member state. Of course, Visio is only for civil servants, not a consumer product, yet it sets a precedent.
On the other hand, an expertly executed French stack could jumpstart a continental open-source community or spur startups to plug gaps. It’s a calculated gamble: France assumes that on net, its security and strategic stakes outweigh any shortfall in bells and whistles.
For its part, France says this isn’t a bare-bones trade-off. Officials emphasize Visio will include modern features: speaker separation, AI for transcripts, captions, etc. The goal is “not [a] minimalist replacement,” but a full-featured tool under domestic control.
In other words, they aim for the best of both worlds, though acknowledging it’s a tall order.
Doing, not just talking
In its own softly decisive way, France’s Visio plan signals a definitive shift: digital sovereignty is no longer a future wish or empty catchphrase, but a deadline-driven program.
Europe has debated “strategic autonomy” for years; this is the first major state-level bet, with clear timelines and budget line savings. From the perspective of a tech editor watching policy trends, it’s heartening to see ambition meet action.
Will it pay off? If Visio runs smoothly, France will score a coup: more secure chats, money saved, and perhaps the bragging rights of a proof of concept. If glitches persist, France’s analysts may ask if the Q1 rollout to 200,000 civil servants is biting off too much too soon.
Either way, the move puts stakes on the table. Digital sovereignty has many meanings, but here it means doing something concrete, even if it means saying “non” to familiar tools.
In the end, it’s a balancing act. Europe gains control of what it might risk in convenience. France has just turned insurance talk into policy practice. Other countries will now watch and learn: Visio is not just a video app; it’s France’s case study in what digital independence can actually look like.
Services Marketplace – Listings, Bookings & Reviews