The Slovak Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatisation has confirmed that it is exploring opportunities to use European solutions, though certified products from NATO countries are still considered safe by the state.
Author: Lucia Lauková
It is extremely rare in Slovakia to find a company that does not use Windows and the Office suite on its computers. It is even less likely in the case of state institutions. While these tools are known to be cost-effective and proven over years, in the current geopolitical environment this can become a risk, particularly as they are controlled by a central entity outside the European Union. Alternative solutions are on the rise, but according to IT experts, several obstacles stand in the way of their wider adoption.
European data is primarily stored on US cloud services, with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google controlling more than two-thirds of the European market. In Slovakia, according to IT experts, dependence on US digital platforms stands at 80 to 90 percent and continues to deepen with the massive rollout of American artificial intelligence integrated into everyday office tools.
“In the e-government and public administration sector, this dependency is almost absolute,” says Ladislav Kovár, e-Gov expert at Slovensko.Digital, who previously served as director of the e-Government Management Department at the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatisation (MIRRI).
“The operation of the slovensko.sk portal is currently built on proprietary and commercial technologies from US manufacturers. One hundred percent of its key components use their software,” confirms the National Agency for Network and Electronic Services (NASES).
Dependence on US technologies poses a critical security risk for the state, as it creates a single point of failure, where an abrupt disconnection from services could paralyse the country’s operations.
“Paradoxically, our slower cloud adoption somewhat protects us from suppliers’ ‘arbitrariness’ for now – the state still runs on many local systems,” Kovár notes.
Why is this a problem
The main threat from an IT security perspective is not disconnection itself, as the state pays substantial sums for these services.
“I don’t see the risk primarily in the platforms being American either. The risk lies in centralisation – when one entity has access to data across the entire infrastructure. When the US administration pressures tech firms to collaborate with intelligence services, it’s a problem,” says Pavol Lupták, a security expert and founder of Nethemba.
According to him, the solution is not to replace one monopoly with another – rather decentralisation and open standards, i.e. creating a network of European or open-source solutions where no single entity has absolute control.
Experts also warn of a loss of legal control over data due to the US CLOUD Act legislation, which allows American authorities access to data even outside US territory.
“From a long-term perspective, the key economic risk and vendor lock-in are also crucial – rising licence prices, limited negotiating power for the state and firms, and dependence on the pace of innovation not dictated by Europe,” adds Ondrej Macko, editor-in-chief of TOUCHIT magazine.
Strategic liberation, but also partnership
Slovakia is not alone in Europe. In Germany, spending on Microsoft products through central procurement rose from €274 million in 2023 to an estimated over €481 million in 2025, while in the Czech Republic a framework agreement worth CZK 14.23 billion (approx. €575 million) was signed in 2024 through 2028. In Slovakia, cumulative drawdown via the MIRRI Central DNS Microsoft, covering ministries and various agencies, stood at approximately €59 million as of March 2024.
The issue does not leave EU officials cold – the Commission has appointed its first “technology sovereignty” chief, Henna Virkkunen, and soon plans to release its International Digital Strategy for Europe. In Brussels, the “Eurostack” is also gaining popularity – an ambitious industrial plan to break free from US tech dominance.
Approaches to dependency differ across the Union, Politico portal noted: while Finland simulates a US “kill switch” and tests strategies to handle emergency service shutdowns, France bans officials from using Teams and Zoom in favour of the domestic Visio platform, and Amsterdam plans to cut ties with US giants by 2035. Germany remains sceptical toward fully replacing non-European technologies, while Baltic states praise US cooperation particularly for greater resilience against Russian cyber threats.
Slovakia proceeds cautiously
The National Security Authority of the Slovak Republic responded that it “systematically examines the security risks of all products regardless of their country of origin and evaluates their security,” with certified products from EU and NATO countries currently considered safe.
“In this area, we are still more passive recipients of directives from Brussels than initiators of our own strategic agenda,” says Kovár.
According to MIRRI, Slovakia is currently conducting an “ongoing evaluation of the state of cloud solutions usage and assessment of possibilities for further diversification and increasing the resilience of state IT infrastructure,” rather than radical restrictions as in France.
MIRRI also told euBrief that it is “exploring options for using European solutions. An example is the current activity of the Slovak Government Commissioner for Artificial Intelligence, who is looking into possibilities for using a language model from France. An example of using European technologies is also the supercomputer at the Slovak Academy of Sciences, supplied by the French company Eviden.”
Experts and more affordable alternatives are lacking
Martina Le Gall Maláková, president of Industry Innovation Cluster and coordinator of Gaia-X Hub Slovakia, states that several Slovak universities and companies are already involved in the European Gaia-X network through innovation consortia, but at the same time warns that Slovakia lacks a coordinated approach toward major US providers and targeted funding for developing digital sovereignty.
Gaia-X is a cloud project launched in 2020 by France and Germany to strengthen Europe’s digital sovereignty by offering alternatives to dominant giants like Amazon and Alibaba, which the tech industry calls “hyperscalers”. The goal is to convince firms to store data in European solutions instead of relying on American and Chinese companies.
Although domestic solutions and alternatives are rapidly improving, according to Maláková they face low awareness of their existence and a lack of political will or champions among large companies.
“European technical solutions are now at a very good level; we just know little about them, and sometimes migration itself is difficult – it requires a concrete decision, either political at the public sector level or policy within companies. Economically, yes, some American solutions are still cheaper for now, and we have to deal with that,” she says. She believes, however, that development is progressing very well. “The data we have in Europe, we want to share only based on European values,” she adds.
According to Ondrej Macko, however, European alternatives do not yet offer a full substitute for the widely used Microsoft 365 ecosystem, mainly in terms of user comfort and service integration.
The main barriers to change also remain the acute shortage of thousands of cybersecurity and open systems management specialists, as well as missing “exit strategies” in state IT contracts.
“For Slovakia, I think a hybrid path is more realistic – combining commercial solutions with clearly defined sovereign zones, such as critical data and state registries. For companies, seeking alternatives to hyperscalers is possible, but economically and operationally viable only in specific cases so far,” Macko concludes.
The project is co-financed by the governments of Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia through Visegrad Grants from the International Visegrad Fund. The mission of the fund is to advance ideas for sustainable regional cooperation in Central Europe.
