But before looking at the study results, let’s take a step back and remember what actually happened in 2025: Microsoft sparked the trend of digital sovereignty in Europe by disabling the account of the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a court based in The Hague, Netherlands - solely because of an order by U.S. President Trump.

This incident was a wake-up call to everyone that the European IT infrastructure must not depend on foreign tech; on tech that is subject to the will of political leaders that Europe has no control over.

Digital sovereignty study results

These geopolitical risks have finally created an awareness among everyone working in IT. The study “State of Digital Sovereignty 2026” surveyed 1,818 IT decision-makers in Germany, France, and the Nordic countries of Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland.

Results in Germany

In Germany it is clear that there’s a growing trend towards adopting European software.

The study reports that 87.5 percent of the IT decision-makers in Germany are in favor of giving preference to European digital products in critical infrastructure, and 39.7 percent of German IT leaders are currently actively implementing European software. This is almost double compared to 2025 when 20.4 percent of IT decision-makers stated they were actively implementing EU tech. Another 20.4 percent of businesses plan to implement European software within the next six months.

Interestingly, IT leaders in Germany are becoming more open to looking at European alternatives, and they are actively sourcing them. In 2025, 47.7 percent of German IT decision-makers said they did NOT want to implement European software. In 2026, only one tenth - 4.6 percent - still say that.

Results in France & Nordics

The responses in France - a country where the government itself is already looking into replacing Windows with Linux - and in the Nordic countries are very similar: In France, 38.5 percent of respondents are in the process of implementing European software solutions, while in the Nordics 35.5 percent of respondents said the same.

New risk assessment

The results of the digital sovereignty study show clearly that the unstable geopolitical situation of the last few years have influenced the way many companies assess risks and the way they are trying to become more sovereign and independent from U.S. tech. In the aforementioned study, 51.5 percent in Germany, 50 percent in France, and 48.9 percent in the Nordic countries state that “geopolitical events have increased their focus on their own sovereignty”.

Plus, Europeans today understand much better that when choosing American software providers, they do not actually own their data. Firstly, many American tech companies use and abuse their users data - not least for AI training. If the data is stored without end-to-end encryption on another company’s servers, it’s simply no longer the data of the business because others have access as well. Secondly, the Cloud Act has been debated more often in recent months: This U.S. law enables American authorities to request access to any data stored by American companies - whether it’s on U.S.-based or European-based servers.

Thus, European businesses increasingly understand that when an American company talks about their “sovereign cloud offerings” - and Google, Amazon, and Microsoft do this a lot - that this is actually just “Sovereign Washing”.

As a result,the study on digital sovereignty revealed that 32.4 percent of IT decision-makers in Germany are planning to switch from foreign providers, while 16.4 percent have already done so.

Who owns your data?

The question is not only server location or provider anymore, digital sovereignty is much more than: It’s who owns your data and who has control over your digital systems?

So everybody now understands that critical systems matter most and must become digitally sovereign as quickly as possible: cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and cloud services. These areas bring together sensitive data, business-critical applications, and central infrastructure, which is why becoming sovereign is more pressing than in other sectors.

A sovereign future?

The Digital Sovereignty Study further revealed that between 94 and 95 percent of respondents in Germany, France and the Nordics believe that European companies are capable of developing competitive digital products themselves.

The study also analyzed how IT decision-makers view the future: In the Nordics, 49.5 percent consider extensive digital independence for Europe to be realistic, whereas in Germany only 39.6 percent state that and in France merely 33.7 percent.

Barriers to adoption

But while lots of IT experts are rather optimistic, change takes time, and we are definitely not where we’d like to be. In the study, the biggest obstacle in all regions was “high migration costs”, stated by 39.7 percent in the Nordics, 34.7 percent in France, and 33.5 percent in Germany. In the Nordics, the issue of a lack of a sufficient overview of European alternatives was even higher with 42 percent.

The high migration cost is fueled in the public sector by framework agreements with Microsoft. For instance, the German government has these framework agreements with Microsoft for all municipalities to use while there is no similar agreement with open source European solutions. That’s why we at Tuta are calling for framework agreements for European alternatives.

Even worse, many European solutions remain unknown outside their respective markets and fail to make it onto the shortlists of large companies and public contractors. This is why policymakers must not only establish framework agreements with these European solution providers, but also help make these companies better known, for instance by leading by example and starting to plan the switch now!

Conclusion

The study “State of Digital Sovereignty 2026” shows that decisions for IT providers are increasingly influenced by digital sovereignty. Geopolitical risks are no longer ignored, but heavily influence buying decisions. This is an amazing opportunity for growth for the European technology sector, and policymakers can directly influence this process by making the right decisions now.

And politicians are realizing their responsibility in leading the change: Andrea Lindholz, Vice President of the German Bundestag and Chair of the Commission on Digital Sovereignty, emphasized during the study’s presentation: “Our data is the gold of the present and the future. The Bundestag, in particular, sits on the largest treasure trove of data in the entire country. If the Bundestag wants to set an example in digital sovereignty, it must have the courage to rely more heavily on German and European solutions.”