Lessons for Asia from Europe's digital sovereignty offensive

On February 3, French cybercrime prosecutors raided X's Paris offices with Europol assistance. Elon Musk received formal summons. Simultaneously, the Paris Public Prosecutor's office announced a total exodus from the platform. 

Previously, France declared that 2.5 million civil servants will transition off Zoom and Microsoft Teams by 2027. Their destination is Visio, a French-developed platform already serving 200,000 government employees. 

These are not isolated regulatory skirmishes.  

They are the opening salvos of a coordinated assertion of digital sovereignty at a scale unseen since the inception of the general data protection regulation (GDPR). A comprehensive European Union (EU) law, effective since middle of 2018.  

For the Asian public sector, the question isn’t whether these developments matter. The question is how to utilise the window of time while global platforms are scrambled by European enforcement. 

Enforcement in action: From moderation to crime 

The French raid followed a year-long investigation into the X platform’s artificial intelligence client, Grok's algorithm.  

In France, the generation of Holocaust denial content is not a content moderation issue. It is a criminal offense.  

By summoning X's leadership, France signaled that market presence now equals legal submission. 

This mirrors the recent Grok bans in Indonesia and Malaysia. Both nations proved that mid-sized states, when acting on clear violations of local law such as non-consensual deepfakes, can force platform concessions.  

France is taking this further by combining the Digital Services Act (DSA) with national criminal law. This creates an enforcement pincer move that most smaller states currently lack. 

The DSA is proving its teeth. In October 2025, the European Commission preliminarily found Meta's Facebook and Instagram in breach of transparency obligations.  

The finding was specific: both platforms used "dark patterns" that discouraged users from reporting illegal content.  

This wasn't an abstract regulatory theory. This was evidence that Meta designed interfaces to make it harder to flag child sexual abuse material and terrorist content.  

Economic consequences follow. Fines reach up to six per cent of global annual turnover. 

The great migration: Infrastructure replacement at scale 

France's shift to Visio is not merely a cost-saving measure. It is a strategic decoupling.  

David Amiel, France's Minister for Public Service, put it bluntly: "We cannot risk having our sensitive data and strategic innovations exposed to non-European actors." 

France is not an outlier. It is the leader of a growing European trend: 

Austria: 16,000 military workstations migrated from MS Office to LibreOffice in September 2025. 

Germany: 30,000 government computers are replacing Teams, Outlook, and Windows with Linux and Open-Xchange. 

Denmark: The Ministry of Digital Affairs transitioned half of its staff to LibreOffice by August 2025. 

These are not pilot programmes. These are completed; large-scale migrations of core government functions away from foreign technology stacks. 

The third way: Germany's open source bet 

Germany is funding what Europe is deploying. Through the Sovereign Tech Fund, Germany invests in the "unglamorous" open-source code, such as encryption protocols and libraries, that makes the digital world run. 

The scale of commitment is substantial. Germany's FITS2030 strategy allocates US$1.7 billion (S$2.16 billion) annually to strengthen its digital and industrial technology position.  

SAP has committed over €20 billion (S$30.11 billion) to reinforce digital sovereignty in Germany. 

In February 2026, Deutsche Telekom opened one of Europe's largest AI factories in Munich. The "Industrial AI Cloud" provides AI computing for businesses, researchers, and public institutions under strict German and EU data protection rules. 

By funding the open-source ecosystem rather than building proprietary national versions of Word or Excel, they create a transparent, auditable infrastructure thatscales.  

When Austria contributes development hours to LibreOffice, those benefits flow to Denmark and Germany. This is a crucial model for Asia.  

Sovereignty does not require building everything from scratch. It requires owning and contributing to the tools you use. 

The Asian reality: Fragmentation versus focus 

Asian public sectors face a distinct sovereignty tax.  

While 92 percent of European data resides in US clouds, the Asian percentages are likely even higher.  

For Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like the Maldives (500,000 people across 184 tiny island communities, smaller than the workforce of major technology companies), or mid-sized economies like Malaysia, the challenge is institutional capacity. 

However, the European offensive provides a blueprint for an Asian pivot: 

The regulatory shield: Do not wait for a Regional DSA. Apply existing national criminal laws regarding harassment, fraud, and public order to platform operations. As the Grok incident proved, platforms respond to blocks and summons rather than polite complaints. 

The open-source coalition: No single Asian nation needs to build a sovereign operating system. Instead, ASEAN members should pool resources to fund and customise open-source alternatives like Nextcloud or LibreOffice. This provides vendor neutrality and eliminates the risk of being "turned off" by a foreign entity. 

Critical scope definition: Digital sovereignty does not mean replacing consumer services. It means securing communications for your Cabinet, your military, and your national ID systems. Start with the strategic core. 

The window of opportunity 

The Grok incident taught us that platforms pay attention when their market access is threatened.

France is now teaching us that systematic sovereignty requires infrastructure replacement, not just regulation. 

European governments are currently migrating millions of workstations to open-source alternatives and building domestic AI factories.  

For Asian public sector officials, the choice is no longer theoretical. You can remain a customer with a grievance, or you can become a state with a sovereign foundation. 

The window is open while platforms are busy answering summons in Paris. How long it stays open depends on how quickly Asia moves from awareness to execution. 

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Mohamed Shareef is a former Minister of State for Environment, Climate Change and Technology in the Maldives (2021-2023). He previously served as Permanent Secretary of Science and Technology Ministry (2019-2021) and the Chief Information Officer at the National Centre for Information Technology (2009-2014) and led the development of the country's national digital public infrastructure. He also served in the academia including as a researcher at the United Nations University. He currently serves as Senior Advisor for Digital Transformation at Nexia Maldives.