Source: IT for Business
The French Cour des comptes, the body that audits public spending, called on 21 October 2026 for the state to reduce its dependency on Microsoft by migrating over three to four years to free and open source office software hosted either by the state itself or by a provider qualified under SecNumCloud, the security label issued by the French cybersecurity agency Anssi. The auditors see the move as a guarantee of independence for public administrations and an economically more virtuous system, estimating that it could cost up to 130 million euros less per year than Microsoft 365.
Sovereignty and the Cloud Act
The core argument is legal exposure, not just price. American companies are subject to the US Cloud Act, which can oblige them to hand data to US authorities regardless of where their servers are located. SecNumCloud qualified providers are deemed insulated from such extraterritorial laws. The Cour des comptes notes that the state spent roughly 100 million euros in 2025 on office and collaborative tools, with four fifths of licence spending going to Microsoft, and that costs are rising fast. The risks of technological dependency on the US have become more concrete in recent years, including cases where Washington restricted foreign access to advanced AI models, which has made sovereignty a board-level issue rather than a theoretical debate.
The auditors also voiced scepticism about the Bleu joint venture between Orange and Capgemini, which most ministries are counting on as a Microsoft-based alternative, noting it has yet to obtain the SecNumCloud qualification and would in any case leave the underlying dependency on a single vendor untouched. Within the public sphere, the gendarmerie and the French tax authority have already largely moved to LibreOffice.
Why it matters beyond France
The recommendation is part of a wider European trend of procurement rules, sovereignty labels and cloud requirements that increasingly favour open source and locally controlled infrastructure, and private companies selling to public sector bodies will feel it too. Choosing between Microsoft 365, a qualified sovereign cloud or a self-hosted open source stack has become a real risk and cost decision. If your organisation wants an independent assessment of your cloud and office tooling dependency, vendor lock-in or SecNumCloud readiness, contact Excello Digital at https://excello.digital/contact/. We advise European organisations on cloud strategy, migration planning and sovereignty compliance.