Denmark’s tech agency is pulling 15,000 government workers off Microsoft by the end of 2026. Moreover, the Færdselsstyrelsen (Danish Road Traffic Authority) starts the pilot next month, replacing Windows and Office 365 with NixOS-based Linux and LibreOffice. This isn’t a test anymore. Consequently, it’s a full commitment backed by Denmark’s digital sovereignty strategy and the Berlin Declaration signed by all 27 EU states last November.
What Denmark Is Actually Doing
Statens IT, Denmark’s governmental IT agency, is leading the SIA Open project. The Road Traffic Authority goes first – all 600 employees will dump Windows, Word, Excel, Teams, and Outlook for a custom NixOS-based Linux distribution and LibreOffice. Furthermore, by December, 15,000 government workers across multiple agencies will have made the same switch.
Stefan Søsted, the Road Traffic Authority’s director, explained the rationale: “It is a question of being properly master in their own house and having full control of the data they have. The Road Traffic Authority has some essential information they want to be sure they know where is.”
That matters because Microsoft admitted under oath that European data stored in EU datacenters remains vulnerable to US government access requests under the CLOUD Act. Datacenters in Denmark don’t change US jurisdiction. Therefore, Denmark wants actual control, not Microsoft’s version of it.
This Isn’t an Isolated Experiment
Denmark is part of a coordinated European exodus from Microsoft. On November 18, 2025, all 27 EU member states signed the Berlin Declaration, committing to digital sovereignty – defined as “the EU and its Member States’ ability to act autonomously and to freely choose their own solutions.”
The numbers tell the story. Indeed, over 800,000 European government workstations are migrating or have already migrated from Windows and Office to open-source alternatives. In fact, Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein allowed its Microsoft 365 licenses to lapse in late 2025. More than 40,000 civil servants now use LibreOffice instead of Word and Excel. Meanwhile, Chancellor Friedrich Merz is shifting Germany’s federal chancellery from Microsoft 365 to openDesk, an open-source suite built for government use.
France has 500,000 LibreOffice users – the largest deployment globally. By 2027, 2.5 million French civil servants will stop using Zoom, Teams, and Webex, switching to Visio, a homegrown video conferencing service. Similarly, Spain’s Valencia region runs LibreOffice on 120,000 PCs. Italy’s Ministry of Defense has over 100,000 users.
In contrast, Denmark isn’t leading. It’s following a proven path.
The Financial Case Is Overwhelming
Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein migration makes the economics clear. Microsoft 365 licenses cost €15 million per year. The one-time migration to LibreOffice and Linux cost €9 million. That’s a seven-month payback. Subsequently, every year after that is pure savings – no license fees, no vendor lock-in, no price hikes.
If Germany can migrate 40,000 civil servants successfully, Denmark’s 15,000-user rollout is achievable. France’s 500,000 users prove LibreOffice works at massive scale. The “migration is too expensive” argument died when governments started publishing the actual numbers.
Microsoft’s Defensive Response Falls Short
Microsoft announced plans for a Danish datacenter region shortly after Denmark revealed its exit strategy. The timing wasn’t subtle. Microsoft positioned it as part of a “cloud for Europe” strategy, promising that operations would be “subject to European laws and regulations.”
However, the problem remains: Microsoft already confirmed EU datacenters don’t protect against US government access. The CLOUD Act gives US authorities jurisdiction over Microsoft data regardless of physical location. Building servers in Denmark doesn’t solve Denmark’s sovereignty problem.
Microsoft’s public response to Denmark’s announcement was equally weak: “Our solutions are competitive and offered at a fair price.” Nevertheless, that ignores the core issue. This isn’t about price. It’s about control. Germany saves €15 million annually, but the real value is independence – no vendor lock-in, no foreign jurisdiction, no surprise license changes.
What Comes Next
Ultimately, Denmark is the canary in the coal mine. The Berlin Declaration wasn’t symbolic. All 27 EU states signed on to reduce “strategic dependencies” on foreign tech providers. Denmark’s 15,000-user migration will complete in nine months. When it succeeds – and Germany, France, and Spain prove it will – expect more governments to follow.
The alternatives exist. OpenDesk provides an enterprise-ready open-source suite. Additionally, Collabora offers commercial LibreOffice support with migration consulting. NixOS-based Linux distributions handle security requirements. The technology works. The financial case is proven. As a result, political consensus exists across the EU.
Microsoft’s enterprise monopoly isn’t invincible. When governments treat vendor lock-in as a national security risk instead of an inconvenience, the calculation changes. Denmark’s migration is the start of that shift.
The era of “everyone uses Microsoft because everyone uses Microsoft” is ending in Europe. The question isn’t whether more governments will leave. It’s how many, and how fast.
