European Commission employees continue to rely on Microsoft Teams for daily work, but the Commission quietly deployed Element Pro as a non‑US “sovereign” backup to reduce dependence on American tech amid competition and security concerns. Element Pro is a collaboration platform aimed at public-sector users and is run on the Commission’s own infrastructure, but it comes from a London-based company - meaning it isn’t an EU domestic product - and was introduced only as an internal, voluntary fallback rather than a mandatory replacement. The move follows recent antitrust negotiations with Microsoft and a Commission push for “digital sovereignty.”
Early trials produced sharply negative user feedback, with several staffers calling the new tool unusable while at least one colleague defended its hosting model. The Element CEO acknowledged implementation pain and pointed to other institutional customers, such as NATO and the UN. The episode underscores the practical difficulty of replacing entrenched US platforms: EU officials worry about espionage and want alternatives, but technical shortcomings, user resistance, and the limited availability of truly EU‑based substitutes mean migration plans (for example France’s target for a domestic Teams/Zoom competitor by 2027 and some German and Austrian moves toward LibreOffice) will be slow and contested.
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