The Risks of the EU’s Reliance on US Tech

Proton, the confidential e -mail service, based in Switzerland, published a report on the vast dependence on the EU's listed companies in American technical services, mainly by e -mail. Using the search for DNS, Proton analyzed the records of the exchange of mail of all public companies in the EU to determine its suppliers of e -mail services.

Shocking, 74% of these companies depend on American giants, such as Google and Microsoft, for their email infrastructure, raising questions about data sovereignty and digital independence.

In this article, we will analyze the country of Proton's Sounders in the country, emphasizing the sectors most dependent on American technologies, and why this is important for the future of Europe.

Spend the country

France: 66% of French enterprises rely on US suppliers, and each publicly listed company cost more than 200 billion euros using US technological glass.

Even more, as for Report It was found that 70% of critical infrastructure suppliers – they think that natural gas, electricity, water treatment – depend on US email services. In the automobile sector, which is the largest employer of the country, this figure increases to colossal 77%.

United Kingdom: Reliance rises to 88%, with 95% dependence on banking and telecommunications. Even in the British technology sector of 1.1 trillion dollars of each public company worth more than 200 billion euros tied to American technology.

Spain: 74% of Spanish enterprises use American suppliers in which at least six sectors of the economy – energy, banks and technical equipment – in them – 100% dependence.

Portugal: Nine key sectors, including energy, banks, insurance and real estate, are completely relying on US email services. With anxiety, each publicly listed Portuguese software and IT company also depends on them.

Northern countriesInterestingly, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Sweden lead the diagram of more than 90% of public companies using US email services.

Why is excessive dependence on American technological companies harmful to Europe?

To understand why this is a critical problem for European companies, we will need to study the possible consequences of outsourcing technologies.

1.

Under Cloud Law (2018)The US authorities can force American service providers to transfer data on the warrant or agenda to the court, regardless of where the data is stored, even if they are on the EU servers.

Although such orders can be challenged if they conflict with local laws such as GDPR, this often includes long -term legal battles, high costs and potential problems of sovereignty.

In short, even if your company is fully operating in the EU, the use of an American email supplier means that your messages can still be available in accordance with the laws of the United States by placing your monitoring of foreign hands. This not only increases safety risks, but also gives a potential competitive advantage to outsiders.

2. Risk of teaching AI

There is also a risk of using your company's data directly or indirectly, to teach artificial intelligence models in the United States.

While Microsoft and Google denied that they used the client data (in addition to publicly available information) to teach AI, they can change their policies at any time. Precedents already exist:

• Zoom updated his policy in 2023 to allow the client’s data to teach artificial intelligence, only to discard it after a public reaction.
• META is scheduled in 2024 to use public content from Facebook and Instagram users in the EU to teach artificial intelligence, but stopped after the DPC Ireland raised legal problemsField

Large technological companies demonstrated repeated intention to use legislative loopholes to feed their models of AI successfully or not. And how Scarlett Johansson-Chavgpt. It is proved that the consent of the user is not always a difficult stop when commercial incentives are strong.

Why do EU companies rely so much on American technologies?

The obvious question is: why? Why do so many EU companies depend on American postal services?

Brief answer: lack of competitive alternatives. And this is due to the relatively slow rate of EU innovation.

Fragmented rules

The EU consists of 27 countries, each of which with its own laws and rules. For a startup trying to scale, this means navigation for a complex network of compliance requirements, slowing down and restriction of the potential of the region for global domination. In fact, around 30% of the EU unicorns ultimately move beyond EuropeField

While some can argue that there are also 50 states with different rules in the United States, all of them work within the framework of one national structure. Thus, regulating variations is much smaller in the United States, which facilitates the scale of companies.

Regulation over innovation

The EU accepted an approach based on the client with strict rules such as GDPR and AI ACT to protect user data.

Although these rules are necessary for sustainable development, these rules can dissuade entrepreneurs to experiment or innovation, especially in rapidly developing sectors such as Tech.

Weak investment environment

Stark rupture is also Stark. According to European Investment Bank (EIB):

• European proportions (companies at the expansion stage) increase 50% less capital than colleagues from San Francisco, by the time they are 10 years old.
• More than 80% of transactions with scaling in Europe are involved in a foreign investor, compared with 14% in San Francisco.
• The United States attract 52% of global venture capital, while the EU runs only 5%.

Such a combination of underfunding and excessive regulation complicates the EU competition, pushing them to US suppliers, which offer reliable, scalable solutions, already supported by deep pockets.

The path forward

It is unrealistic to think that the EU companies will suddenly stay once moving patriotism and completely stop using American technologies. These services have become the fundamental pillars of the European business, and you cannot replace the foundation overnight.

What is needed is carefully planned, well -formulated vision to gradually reduce US dependence. To begin with, companies can take alternatives based on the EU, such as Proton Mail (Switzerland), Startmail (Netherlands) and TUTA (Germany) for e -mail. For cloud storage, the options include Tresorit (Switzerland) and Cryptee (Estonia).

France offers a model worthy of study. The government has developed Digital setThe platform for working with open source code with tools similar to Microsoft 365, complete with Visio for unlimited video conferences, TCHAP for safe exchange groups, disk for cloud storage, our own webcam service and safe solution for file transfer. All data is stored exclusively on the certified SECNUMCLOD infrastructure in France, protecting digital sovereignty.

Ultimately, the EU should contribute to sustainable homegrown enterprises by injection of capital and more intelligent regulation, eliminating growth barriers, stimulating innovation.

Like France, governments should support the initiatives that maintain data and digital control in Europe. The protection of data confidentiality is important, but the protection of data independence is equally crucial if the EU wants to create something really European, without relying on American technologies.