An unassuming corner of Europe has become a testing ground for digital sovereignty. Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, is working to create an entirely open-source region and reduce its reliance on US technology. It may provide a blueprint for EU governments seeking to do the same.
European countries are waking up to the dangers of allowing US hyperscalers to run their critical technology infrastructure. Out of such fears has grown the digital sovereignty movement, which stresses the ownership and control by a domestic sovereign over data and digital infrastructure within its borders. Leading voices in the movement argue that, thanks to legislation such as the Cloud Act, data hosted by US tech providers within the EU is still accessible to the US government even if those companies adhere strictly to domestic regulations.
A confluence of factors has caused interest in digital sovereignty to bloom. In February, JD Vance, the US vice-president, delivered a disastrous speech in Munich, in which he criticised European governments for allegedly failing to uphold Western values such as free speech. What’s more, countries are increasingly worried that US firms can be used by the Trump administration to achieve its foreign policy aims. For instance, Microsoft purportedly disconnected the email account of Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, following the imposition of US sanctions against him. Microsoft denies this claim.
But Schleswig-Holstein’s open-source initiative pre-dates recent transatlantic spats. The state started its open-source initiative about five years ago in an effort to save licensing costs. “What began as a technical project is now a political project,” said the state’s CIO, Sven Thomsen, speaking at the Nextcloud Summit in Munich.
Businesses and governments globally are taking note. “We’ve had interest from Denmark, the UK, France, New Zealand, India, Switzerland and Austria – there’s been great interest from outside of Germany,” says Dirk Schrödter, the head of the State Chancellery of Schleswig-Holstein. He argues that the security of digital infrastructure is just as important as that of energy infrastructure.
How Schleswig-Holstein went open source
Organisations around the world have relied on software produced by US companies such as Microsoft and Google for decades. No wonder they might struggle to decouple from the American tech titans. But swapping out proprietary tooling for open-source tech is feasible provided organisations plan the shift carefully, says Schrödter. “Digital sovereignty is achievable with a step-by-step transition.”
Schleswig-Holstein’s shift to open source started in 2024, when it swapped out Microsoft Office for the free, open-source alternative LibreOffice. The software suite contains a word processor, a spreadsheet program, a presentation tool similar to PowerPoint, graphics editors and database-management tools, and is now standard in all of Schleswig-Holstein’s offices. By the end of September, the state will have scrapped Microsoft Office completely, including the Outlook email program. A migration is underway to bring in Open-Xchange with the Thunderbird email client.
There’s more, too. Schleswig-Holstein replaced Microsoft Sharepoint with Nextcloud, and Teams and Cisco’s Webex with open-source conferencing systems such as Jitsi, with plans to integrate OpenTalk in the near term. Its IT team is also exploring an open-source alternative to its telephony system.
However, because many commercial IT service providers have embedded software by Microsoft and its peers in their services, moving away from the Silicon Valley giants has proved challenging, even when contracting domestic firms. To those businesses, Schrödter issues a warning: “Companies have no future if they do not open their solutions to open standards.”
Some state employees, including Schrödter, are using Linux-based computers as part of a pilot to drop Windows, while the chancellery is experimenting with a fleet of smartphones by the Dutch manufacturer, Fairphone.
But avoiding American and Chinese tech is difficult given that the majority of internal components, such as microprocessors, are manufactured by those two countries. “We have dependencies here,” Schrödter concedes, adding that this is a problem that must be solved at an EU level.
Funding open-source change
Although switching to open-source solutions can help organisations save costs, every IT project, even one involving free and open software, requires funding to be successful. Schleswig-Holstein is rerouting money saved from licensing fees to cover IT migration, management and maintenance. But it is also putting the a certain amount into a slush fund for wholly new projects.
Schrödter adds that, by moving away from US providers, the state is helping to finance the domestic digital economy, which is a more responsible way to use the public budget. He points to a 2021 study by the European Commission, which found that a 10% increase in open-source investment across the bloc could help produce 600 new startups and a 0.6% rise in GDP growth.
The Open Source Program Office Schleswig-Holstein coordinates and oversees the state’s open-source strategy and has, for instance, helped to fund a local ‘innovation hub’, where civil-society groups, universities, startups, businesses and public sector organisations are working to build a state-wide open-source ecosystem. The state’s Open Innovation initiative, meanwhile, enables public sector organisations to collaborate with the open-source community to solve real-world problems. These efforts have led to the creation of open-source platforms such as Electronic Case File, a digital document-management system.
Politicians promoting digital sovereignty, such as the German Green MEP Alexandra Geese, have suggested that the EU is caught between American and Chinese interests. “We are being blackmailed by the current US administration and the American and Chinese tech companies,” she recently said. “This is why it’s so important that we build our own technological and digital infrastructure, that we support our own companies, that we keep the talent we have here in Europe,” she added. “Not closing Europe off, but working with open standards.”
Meanwhile, intergovernmental organisations such as the UN continue to drive forward the need for open standards. Although the road to digital independence might be long, with manifold twists and turns, many companies and governments will closely be watching what this small German state, buffered by the Baltic sea, is able to achieve.
An unassuming corner of Europe has become a testing ground for digital sovereignty. Schleswig-Holstein, Germany’s northernmost state, is working to create an entirely open-source region and reduce its reliance on US technology. It may provide a blueprint for EU governments seeking to do the same.
European countries are waking up to the dangers of allowing US hyperscalers to run their critical technology infrastructure. Out of such fears has grown the digital sovereignty movement, which stresses the ownership and control by a domestic sovereign over data and digital infrastructure within its borders. Leading voices in the movement argue that, thanks to legislation such as the Cloud Act, data hosted by US tech providers within the EU is still accessible to the US government even if those companies adhere strictly to domestic regulations.
A confluence of factors has caused interest in digital sovereignty to bloom. In February, JD Vance, the US vice-president, delivered a disastrous speech in Munich, in which he criticised European governments for allegedly failing to uphold Western values such as free speech. What's more, countries are increasingly worried that US firms can be used by the Trump administration to achieve its foreign policy aims. For instance, Microsoft purportedly disconnected the email account of Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Court in the Hague, following the imposition of US sanctions against him. Microsoft denies this claim.
