Since yesterday, the European Parliament has been using French Qwant instead of Google – and that’s just the beginning

The change was described as a step “in line with Parliament’s commitment to digital sovereignty and the protection of users’ personal data.”

What is Qwant anyway?

Qwant is a French search engine. founded in 2013, today owned by the French technology group Synfonium, and designed so that it does not track users or collect personal data. It’s not nearly as well-known as Google – but that’s not even the point for the EU institutions at the moment.

The bigger picture: Europe is detaching itself from the American tech sector

In the background of everything is a specific concern that has grown during Trump’s second term – American laws allow all data managed by American companies, including data on Europeans stored in Europe, to end up in the hands of American intelligence services. An additional concern is the political instability in the USA, which calls into question the reliability of American services in the future.

On the same day that the Parliament switched to Qwant, the European Commission also announced its own technical sovereignty package covering AI, cloud services and semiconductors. All together, it is a coordinated move towards digital independence – from search engines to infrastructure.

Critics, however, warn that Brussels’ response increasingly resembles digital protectionism – and the question is where the line is between sovereignty and simply closing the market to European alternatives.