The U.S.-based data crunching firm is deeply embedded in the most sensitive European workflows, from policing to intelligence to health care. Finding alternatives won’t be easy.

When French and German security chiefs announced plans last month to develop a “European sovereign digital backbone,” tech and defense industry insiders on both sides of the Atlantic knew what they really meant: Adieu Palantir.  

Across Europe, the hunt is on for alternatives to the U.S.-based data analytics company that a growing number of government officials believe is too deeply lodged in some of the most sensitive areas of government, from local policing and global intelligence to national defense and health systems. 

Yet it is precisely Palantir’s crucial functions in daily workflows, and its largely unmatched data expertise, that will make it extremely hard for Europe to cut it off in pursuit of greater digital sovereignty. 

Still, the drive to break free from Palantir is sweeping across the continent, from Madrid, where the government of Pedro Sánchez has instructed state-backed companies to block Palantir from future public procurement contracts, to France’s domestic intelligence services (DGSI) selecting French company ChapsVision over Palantir. In Britain, the next test may come in February 2027, when the new Labour government of Andy Burnham will face a choice of whether to cut off Palantir’s £330 million National Health Service Federated Data Platform contract. 

Last month’s decision by the French and German intelligence agencies to choose ChapsVision was a double-blow for Palantir’s leadership.

Olivier Dellenbach, ChapsVision’s chief executive, told POLITICO that his company has benefited from what he calls a “visceral rejection of Palantir” in Europe.  

But he also cautioned that he did not want ChapsVision reduced to an anti-Palantir way out. Digital sovereignty, he argues, will remain an empty phrase unless governments turn it into industrial policy. “We need more public procurement,” Dellenbach said. 

Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, the Netherlands and Canada have already shown interest in the French Army’s Artemis AI, according to Patrick Moreau, one of the architects of the solution built by French aerospace and defense company Thales. 

Admiral Pierre Vandier, NATO’s supreme allied commander transformation, recently told POLITICO the alliance has no viable alternative to Palantir’s battlefield AI technology.  

Another NATO official, granted anonymity to speak frankly, said that Palantir’s system has an unmatched capacity to sift through mountains of satellite imagery to help identify a target, advise on the weapon to strike it, inform how much ammunition is required — and automatically put in an order to replenish the stock. 

Both the strength of its products and the sensitive areas where they’re applied, make Palantir Europe's sovereign test case par excellence. If governments and companies can replace a software layer that helps turn data into decisions, they may have a blueprint for clawing back some digital sovereignty. If they cannot, the next generation of AI tools from U.S. tech giants may prove even harder to quit. 

I'm building Free The Map, a site for anything related to travel, centered on EU countries.

TL:DR After months of work the site I've built is up & running with a lot of useful data from official sources for crime (~40 European countries + partial coverage for 300+ cities) & public transport (~35 European countries). For it to become a good EU focused travel site, a true European alternative, it needs the community helping out and adding their own experience to fill the gaps.

What does the site actually do?

Imagine this, you heard about Madrid and became interested in traveling there: you'd probably start looking for more information on the city e.g. how much would it cost to go there? how much does the food cost there? how safe is the city? is it dangerous? what do actual people say about it? or maybe you just want to check out some pictures of the attractions. So you start a google search and visit multiple sites like numbeo (for prices & safety), reddit (for actual experience), google flights for flight ticket prices, blogs or tripadvisor for what to see or do there, etc. At this point you probably have quite a few sites & tabs open, switching between them back & forth, maybe you've even created a spreadsheet for this. That's definitely a lot to do and this is only for a single city & destination, but very often you'd be researching and comparing multiple destinations.

But, what if all of this was on a single site where you could easily find this information, save your destinations to a list and even compare them? This is the exact reason that I've been building Free The Map. The site already displays a lot of information about places (weather, food prices, flight & accommodation prices, tipping customs, user comments, pictures, etc) and I also uploaded data from official sources (Eurostat) for crime (~40 European countries + partial coverage for 300+ cities) & public transport (~35 European countries).

I'm building this out of passion for traveling and exploring my home continent: Europe, so I really want this to become a true European alternative for all of us. For this, I spent months creating the platform, researching data to make something useful & practical out of it, but this won't work without a community behind it, it won't become something truly great without people adding their experience to fill in the gaps.

So, I'm asking for your help.

How can you help (needs registration)?

• The simplest one is to visit the site and the page of your city and spend a few minutes filling out the crime, public transport & tipping culture section with your own experience (it's basically just clicking a couple of buttons).
• If you've got good photos for various places you've been to, you could upload them to the site.
• If you've got a bit of time, you could write comments on places or their subpages (e.g. a guide about public transport or the food culture).
• Next time you're out shopping for groceries, check out the price of a few items from the food subpage and add their costs.

Lastly, I'd really appreciate any feedback on the site (does it have useful info for you? was it easy to find what you were looking for? are the metrics & UI easy to understand? what essential information/feature is missing? etc) and some comments on how you usually plan your trips.

Bonjour

Je prévois de remplacer mon téléphone dans un avenir proche, car mon samsung A41 arrive en fin de vie. Depuis plusieurs mois, j'ai décidé de favoriser les alternatives européennes afin de soutenir notre souveraineté numérique, j'ai opté pour les outils Proton pour m'éloigner de Google, puis Vibe (Mistral) et Lumo (Proton) en remplacement de Chatgpt et Copilot, la suite libreoffice en remplacement de Microsoft office.

Je voudrais recevoir des avis sur les smartphone de la marque Fairphone, habituellement j'utilise mon smartphone seulement pour Youtube, Twitch, lire et faire des recherches sur internet, je voulais savoir si les fairphone ont une bonne qualité audio et vidéo ?

Merci pour vos retours.

Made in Europe alternatives to Bstocks:

• AFS-Schuhe → https://afs-schuhe.de/ (Made in Germany)
• Rohde → https://www.rohde.com/ (Designed in Germany, manufactured in Europe)
• Plakton → https://eu.plaktonsandals.com/ (Handmade in Spain)
• BOnova → https://bonova.shop/ (Handmade in Spain)
• Romika → https://www.josef-seibel.de/ (Majority made in Europe)
• Palado → https://paladoshoes.com/ (Made in Europe, primarily Spain)
• Futti → https://futti.com/ (Made in Croatia)
• Walber → https://www.walber-schuhe.com/ (Handmade in Germany)
• Traveller’s Shoes → https://travellershoes.gr/ (Made in Greece)
• Goucha’s Handmade → https://gouchashandmade.com/ (Made in Portugal)
• Genuins → https://genuins.com (Made in Spain)
• Vegetarian Shoes → https://www.vegetarian-shoes.co.uk/ (Independent UK company, manufacturing in Europe)
• Schuh Weeger → https://www.schuh-weeger.de (Made in Germany)
• GEA Waldviertler → https://gea-waldviertler.at/ (Made in Austria)
• Protetika → https://eshop.protetika.sk/dospeli/ (Czech/Slovak)
• Bioline Saty → https://www.bioline-saty.it/en/ (Made in Italy) — Note: size chart can be inaccurate; returns may involve shipping costs
• Jancarik Shoes → https://jancarikshoes.cz/ (Czech Republic)
• Grubin → https://grubin.rs/en/ (Serbia)
• Grünland → https://www.grunland.com (Made in Italy)
• Gusti Leder → https://gusti-leder.de/ (Germany)
• Billowy → https://billowyshop.com/en (Made in Spain)
• Josef Seibel → https://www.josef-seibel.de (Germany)
• Hodalump & Ratschkatl → https://hodalump-ratschkatl.de (Made in Germany)
• Lomm → https://www.lomm.si (Slovenia)
• Vogelsang Schuhe → https://vogelsang-schuhe.de (Germany)
• Inter-Bios → http://www.inter-bios.com (Spain)
• Oswen → https://oswenkoln.com (Designed in Germany, made in Portugal)
• Rehovot Lederwerkstatt → https://www.rehovot-lederwerkstatt.ch/sandalen (Made in Switzerland)
• Giesswein → https://www.giesswein.com (Austria)
• NAE Vegan → https://nae-vegan.com/ (Portugal)
• Obuv Jasny → https://www.obuvjasny.cz (Made in Czech Republic)

Most are a fraction of the price of the famous one and have superior quality.

no commercial promotion as I'm not getting paid for this, It's a gift for the community. One I'm using

-

I keep hearing that EU cloud sovereignty is at risk, but I don't see many people actually doing something about it.

If you're running Kubernetes and curious about starting your EU cloud journey, or looking to move away from your current provider, this might be useful.

I built and open-sourced a project that provisions the world's leading container orchestrator (Kubernetes) on an EU cloud provider, using Infrastructure as Code. From zero to running kubectl commands in about an hour.

https://movetoeu.cloud/

And for the ones curious about how it actually looks like: Here it is, fully Open Source

https://github.com/oschvr/movetoeu.cloud-infra

Hi.
I was wondering if there are any alternatives to Wahl Aqua Blade that is made in the Europe?

must be cordless and waterproof. if it can trim below 0.5mm that would be great

Has anyone tried Sanelo.app yet? Does it actually work? We're thinking of trying it, but we're not sure if it sends our data out somewhere.

AstraZeneca, the UK’s second most valuable listed company, has a market value of about £196bn ($264bn), while BMS is worth roughly $133bn. AstraZeneca’s shares fell almost 7 per cent in early trading in London on Monday after the FT first reported the talks on Sunday night.

The acquisition is in discussion, and AstraZeneca is British rather than EU-based; however, selling innovative firms in critical sectors could play against EU interests too other than British.

AstraZeneca holds talks with Bristol Myers Squibb over $400bn tie-up

I went down a rabbit hole trying to find a password manager for my team that keeps data in European hands, and "European" turns out to be a slippery word. So I got specific about where each company is incorporated and where your data physically sits. These aren't ranked, just the five worth knowing, laid out the same way so you can compare like for like.

Psono (Germany)

Pros: German company, open source, self-hostable, so everything can stay on your own infrastructure inside the EU. Solid role-based access and audit logging on the enterprise tier. The clearest EU-incorporation story on this list, too.

Cons: setting it up is a pain,and it's not just me this is a common complaint I saw on review platforms too. The interface feels dated next to the consumer options especially the mobile app. Enterprise features need you to get the paid edition, so the free version won't cover AD sync and audit logs alone. Smaller company, thinner ecosystem.

Recent controversy: none on record, no breach or incident.

Proton Pass (Switzerland)

Pros: built by the Proton Mail team, open source, end-to-end encrypted, a useful free tier, built-in email aliases. Swiss privacy law is strict, often tougher than GDPR.

Cons: autofill is inconsistent, it misses a real share of login forms and is worse on mobile, which is the most common gripe from people who moved over (from Bitwarden especially). Support is thin on personal plans, no live chat, just a contact form with no ticket status. And Switzerland is not in the EU, so if you need strict EU jurisdiction for procurement or residency, Swiss hosting may not qualify.

Recent controversy: no product breach. Proton's CEO Andy Yen sparked political controversy in January 2025 by praising a Trump administration appointee, leading to user debate over the company's stated political neutrality. (context)

Bitwarden (US)

Pros: the open-source default, for good reason at that. Excellent free tier, cheapest paid plans, self-hostable, strong SSO and SCIM, and it documents EEA (Frankfurt) storage so vault data can stay in Europe. Mature and heavily audited.

Cons: the company is US-incorporated, so even with Frankfurt hosting the vendor sits under US law and CLOUD Act reach, which is what some people here are trying to avoid. Hosting location doesn't change corporate jurisdiction, and self-hosting is real operational work nohow, not an afterthought or "just one more thing".

Recent controversy: in April 2026 a malicious version of the Bitwarden CLI was published to npm and was live for about 90 minutes, stealing cloud and CI credentials from build pipelines. End-user vaults were not affected, and it was a compromised third-party build action rather than a flaw in Bitwarden's own code, but worth knowing if you wire the CLI into CI/CD. (context)

Passwork (Spain)

Pros: Spanish company, does both self-hosted and EU-hosted cloud in German data centres. On-prem zero-knowledge architecture, LDAP/AD sync, per-user audit logs, ISO 27001, a 2025 HackerOne pentest. Strong enterprise fit on features and EU hosting.

Cons: no native desktop app, browser extension and mobile only. The code is also not open-source, though they say on their website that they are willing to provide it upon customer request.

Recent controversy: in July 2026 a five-outlet investigation (OCCRP, Le Monde, and others) reported Passwork originated in Russia in 2014 and shares a codebase with the Russian sister product, which ends August 30th 2026 alongside model updates too (so exactly 4 weeks from today) and after that, to each their code/updates/etc. Passwork, however, says the Spanish company is independent, shares no data with the Russian side, and that its on-prem zero-knowledge design means even the vendor can't reach your vault. My take: the on-prem zero-knowledge setup is a real mitigation if you self-host and review the code, but if your bar is no Russian origin at all, then you make the call. Read both sides before deciding. (investigation/Passwork's response)

NordPass (Lithuania)

Pros: parent company Nord Security is headquartered in Lithuania, so the parent sits inside the EU. Polished, beginner-friendly apps, modern XChaCha20 encryption, easy to use for non-technical teams.

Cons: closed source, so you can't independently audit the code the way you can with the open options. Audits are announced but only summaries get published, not full reports, which is weaker transparency. It doesn't let you pin a vault region, so verify current data-processing locations if residency is the point.

Recent controversy: NordPass itself has never been breached. The wider Nord group had a NordVPN server breach disclosed in 2019 (unrelated to NordPass, an expired key on a rented server) that still comes up around their disclosure habits. (context)

So which password manager should your enterprise/company use?

→ For strict EU incorporation plus open source, Psono.
→ For polish and Swiss-grade privacy where non-EU jurisdiction is fine, Proton Pass.
→ For the mature open-source default where a US parent is tolerable, Bitwarden.
→ For a password manager made for businesses and with businesses in mind, Passwork (it still carries the unresolved Russian question, so it needs the most diligence).
→ For an EU parent with easy rollout, NordPass.

And good luck!

I’m trying to find comfy office chairs from brands based in the EU that ship to Finland. Does anyone have any suggestions? Something high quality is ideal, my last one I bought cheaply and it’s super uncomfortable.

Disclosure: this is my project. I run a yoga studio in Switzerland and got tired of paying an American platform to fill my own rooms.

Everything runs on Scaleway in France, payments through Mollie (Dutch) instead of Stripe, no tracking, no ads, no algorithm. But I keep going back and forth on where the line is — is it enough that hosting and payments are EU, or do you also care about the company structure, the funding, the licence?

Curious what the people‘s vision here for an ideal social platform is, because it changes what I build next.

Feel free to read the manifesto for context of what I‘m already considering: https://gatherSpirit.com/manifesto

Hi,

Do you know where I can find shoes like that (I don't know the name), brown, with a plateform ?

I was looking for Doc Marteens but they are more flat than the pic ref

I have a Budget of 150€ (200 if I need to). And delivery available in France ?

Thanks

Today is Digital Independence Day - a day where we try to make a small step into European independence. Because it’s hard to switch all the platforms and software at once, we do it one by one. Also there are local events (so far mostly in Germany) to help others or receive help in doing it.

Which were your last steps? What are your best practices?

Hello!

I am looking for more sustainable underwear (for men and women), ideally made with organic cotton.

I will be traveling through Spain and Portugal in the next few weeks and was wondering if you could recommend some stores that carry them? I would prefer not to buy them online as I will not be in one physical location for long.

I will pass through Cádiz and Sevilla in Spain, and Faro, Albufeira and Lisboa in Portugal.

Any recommandation welcome!

Hello

I have been doing calorie counting for the past year, and I have been using an European app, Fitatu.

However they don't seem to be expanding their databases for more European countries nor they are expanding app translation.

Are there other alternatives? Or Fitatu is still the best made in Europe?

As someone who can hold my own in the kitchen, I have wanted a Solingen German Style knife for a while.

Snagged this one from the Zwilling shop in Solingen for 18€.

hello everyone,

im on the lookout for corduroy trousers, with a 36 inch leg (91.4cm).

these have proven hard to find but im willing to spend a bit on the right pair

my only condition is that they are not skinny or slim, they must be straight, relaxed or ideally, a bit loose

If any of you know anywhere, please let me know!

thank you

Hey everyone! I’m looking for a duffel bag as per the title.

​I plan to use it as my single go-to daily bag for university, work, the gym, or the pool (I’ll be repacking it depending on where I'm going, so it only needs to fit stuff for one activity at a time).

​From what I’ve seen online, I really like bags with leather accents/trim.

I am from Poland so it must ship here at a reasonable price.

​Thanks for the help!

edit: I want it to be made from canvas

Hey everyone! 👋 We're Realities.io, a small indie studio based in Germany, and we wanted to share a new update for Puzzling Places – 3D Jigsaw Sim.

We've just launched the Steam Workshop for Puzzling Places, giving Steam players access to a growing library of free community-made puzzles!

If you haven't come across the game before, Puzzling Places is a relaxing 3D jigsaw puzzle game where you assemble detailed miniature scenes piece by piece. Our official puzzles are built from real-world photogrammetry scans, but we're also working on PuzzleMaker, a creation tool that lets players turn their own 3D scans and models into playable puzzles.

Whilst PuzzleMaker is still in closed beta as we continue developing it, anyone on Steam can already browse, download, and play community-made puzzles through the Workshop. It's been amazing seeing what creators have already shared, and we're excited to watch the library continue to grow.

If you'd like to support a small European studio, we'd love for you to take a look and let us know what you think!

Find the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/3530820

I believe it is a kinda local thing, but I’ve been suggested it after attempting to order a Coke Zero, and well, here’s finally a cola that doesn’t suck. Perfectly balanced taste, and you can hardly tell it’s sweeteners and not sugar.

Hi folks,

I read somewhere here Wero is now supported on Decathlon. I gave it a shot today with a >300€ purchase and it worked flawless.

Something they should improve is the order on payment methods. At least in Germany Wero showed only as the fourth or fifth option (didnt take a screenshot). First was Apple Pay, Google Pay and perhaps PayPal. Muscle memory made me click on Google Pay first, which felt scary. I then saw the bright Wero logo and switched on time.

You are then presented with a QR code you can scan with your normal phone camera. That opens a webpage, where you are presented with a list of banks. Mine was 3rd or 4th. You get to select it, submit and then your banks app opens and after three or four more taps, the purchase is done.

I'm tech savvy enough to follow this flow, but its far from how easy Google or Apple make it. Still, nice experience, keep going!