The article discusses Europe's response to a cyber incident involving the ICC prosecutor, leading to a shift towards a self-sufficient digital infrastructure.
The article outlines a significant development in European digital policy, prompted by an incident involving ICC prosecutor Karim Khan. In May 2025, Khan discovered that his emails had disappeared due to U.S. sanctions that turned Microsoft from a service provider into a political pressure tool. This incident spurred European institutions to recognize their digital sovereignty as an urgent operational necessity rather than a mere intellectual luxury.
In reaction to the American executive order that cut off Khan's access to sensitive case files, the ICC decided to abandon Microsoft Office in favor of the European open-source platform 'Open Disk'. This decision marked a pivotal moment, prompting a broader European movement toward digital independence. It led to significant changes across various sectors, with the Austrian army completely discarding Microsoft services and the city of Lyon transitioning to open-source tools.
Moreover, the French government initiated a massive shift by transferring 5.7 million public employees to the open-source platform 'Visio'. This incident illustrates the immediate repercussions of geopolitical tensions on technological infrastructure and highlights Europe's urgent push for digital autonomy, which underscores a growing trend towards self-reliance in the face of external pressures.
