France is banning public officials from using U.S. video call platforms like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and Google Meet. The government wants to use its own digital tools instead.
The Prime Minister's office is set to release a rule that makes civil servants use Visio, a video call tool created by the Interministerial Digital Authority (Dinum). It will be hosted on servers from the French cloud provider Outscale. The announcement should come out soon.
This action shows that Europe is worried about depending so much on U.S. tech. State Reform Minister David Amiel mentioned earlier that France plans to completely switch to a local video call solution for the government by 2027.
France has done this sort of thing before. In 2024, officials were told to stop using WhatsApp and Telegram and start using Tchap, a messaging app made just for civil servants.
Visio already has about 40,000 users, including most government departments and some public organizations like the CNRS. Dinum wants to reach 250,000 users and might even block foreign video tools on the government network to make sure everyone complies.
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