Digital sovereignty: what the European movement teaches a group of companies
European administrations are announcing migrations to open source. Beyond the announcement effect, three practical criteria — jurisdiction, reversibility, control — for a group.
In 2026, several European administrations announced they were reducing dependence on US software providers: migrating workstations to Linux, dropping framework agreements, replacing collaboration tools with European open source solutions (FOSS Force, TYPO3 News). Figures quoted vary between sources, and these projects stretch over years. They should be read as a signal of direction, not a track record.
What the movement tells a company
It says that dependence on a single vendor subject to foreign law is a risk that even large organizations are now willing to put a price on. It doesn't say everything must be replaced. For a mid-sized structure, sovereignty isn't a state to reach but a property to measure, block by block.
Three distinct criteria
The word "sovereign" covers three things that need separating:
- Jurisdiction: under which law is data hosted, and who can demand access to it?
- Reversibility: can data be exported in an open format and the provider changed without rewriting the business?
- Operational control: do you know who administers the systems, and could you carry on without that person or provider?
Open technologies answer the last two criteria well; the first depends mostly on hosting location and operator.
A group reading
In a multi-company structure, the stake is to make common dependencies visible. A tool adopted by one subsidiary often becomes, over time, the tool of all the others. Asking each entity three questions — which critical tools, hosted where, with what possibility of exit — is enough to reveal fragile points, without launching a large migration project.
Caution on three pitfalls
- Ideology: replacing a tool because it is American, without analyzing real risk, is costly and can degrade service. Start with what exposes you most or costs most.
- Change management: a technically superior tool that people don't adopt is a failure.
- Confusing open with free: the saving is on licenses; operations and maintenance remain a real cost, which must be planned for.
A long-standing conviction
This choice of open technologies didn't emerge from the news: it runs through the group's trajectory from the start, as we explain in this article. The 2026 movement confirms its strategic interest; it doesn't change the principle: favor what can be inspected, exported and taken back in hand.