Europe searches for alternatives to Microsoft Teams and Office
The European Commission, the French administration and the Austrian military are testing or deploying European and open-source software. The reasons are concerns about data control, licensing costs and dependence on U.S. suppliers.
The European Commission and other countries
In the summer of 2026, the European Commission launched Element Pro as a backup communication system in case of problems with Microsoft services. The tool from British company Element uses the open Matrix protocol and runs on the Commission's infrastructure. However, Microsoft Teams remains in everyday use.
The tests also showed an organizational barrier. Officials criticized Element Pro on an internal forum, and Spider's Web (opens in a new tab) points to their attachment to the features and interface of Teams. The test reports were also described by Brussels Signal (opens in a new tab).
The Austrian military replaced Microsoft Office with the open-source LibreOffice suite. In turn, on March 4, 2026, Office.eu launched in The Hague, built on Nextcloud and storing data exclusively in European data centers. The backdrop to these decisions is the U.S. CLOUD Act, which allows U.S. authorities to request data from American companies regardless of server location.
France: Visio instead of Teams
The French government decided to remove the Teams, Zoom, Webex and GoTo Meeting platforms from the administration. According to CyberDefence24 (opens in a new tab), Teams is to disappear from officials' computers by the end of 2026, and in 2027 the domestic Visio is to cover about 2.5 million public-sector employees.
Visio was developed by the Interministerial Digital Directorate. The software has open source code and an MIT license. After a year of testing, about 40,000 people use it, and it had previously been deployed by the Ministry of Defence.
The French government estimates that giving up paid licenses will save about 1 million euros per year for every 100,000 users. A Polish company considering a similar move should, in addition to the license cost, calculate the time needed for the pilot, compatibility with email and calendar, and the effort required for the team to switch to the new tool.