Surprising plans in The Hague International Criminal Court could replace Microsoft with German software

Germany is not exactly known as the home of major software developments. Now it is said that the International Criminal Court wants to replace applications of the tech giant Microsoft with software from Germany. However, there is a reason behind this other than technical superiority.

According to a media report, the International Criminal Court (ICC) is putting its Microsoft office software to the test and wants to replace it with the German program package OpenDesk. The background is the concern about possible sanctions by the US government under President Donald Trump, reported the "Handelsblatt".

According to this, the Court is about to sign a contract with the State Centre for Digital Sovereignty (Zendis), which coordinates the development of OpenDesk. "Given the circumstances, we must reduce dependencies and strengthen the technological autonomy of the Court of Justice - even if this is expensive, inefficient and inconvenient in the short term," Osvaldo Zavala Giler, who is responsible for IT at the ICC, told the newspaper.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a permanent international criminal court outside the United Nations (UN) and has its headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands. Its legal basis is the multilateral Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court of 17. July 1998. The ICC started its activities on 1. July 2002 and is responsible for more than 120 states - about 60 percent of all states worldwide.

The court is responsible, among other things, for crimes against humanity. In 2023, it had issued an international arrest warrant against Russian President Vladimir Putin, but it has not yet been executed. Last year, among other things, an arrest warrant was issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and against leaders of the radical Islamic Hamas militia. Especially the arrest warrant against Netanyahu had insturbed Trump.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/54231518

A cloud service is either sovereign or it’s not – just as food is either organic or it’s not. You can’t be 75% organic, and you shouldn’t be 75% sovereign either. Yet that’s exactly the confusion created by the European Commission’s new EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework. [...]

In practice, most European cloud service providers are likely to score lower than foreign hyperscalers under this system – perhaps that’s the idea – preserving the status quo under a cloak of “sovereignty.” The message seems to be: can’t comply with European ownership and control requirements? Never mind – make up the numbers through investment or participation in EU schemes.

CISPE (Cloud Infrastructure Services Providers in Europe) is the trade association and lobbying group for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud providers in Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CISPE

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/38490595

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/c/buyeuropean/p/1407625/what-are-some-good-european-made-tools

cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/35547211

Ahead of the European Council meeting on 23.10.2025, 2,178 scientists urge EU Heads of States & Governments to take ambitious decisions for the 2040 targets.

The European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change advised that a 90%–95% net domestic reduction of greenhouse gases (GHG) until 2040 (compared to the 1990 baseline) is necessary in order to achieve climate neutrality by 2050. The political discussion is moving further away from the scientific evidence, espe­cially in the revision of the EU climate law (2040 climate target). Ahead of the summit of Heads of state and Heads of government on 23/10/2025, we urge policymakers to stick to science and stick to Paris. The EU should have submitted its target to the United Nations already in September – in time for the 2025 UN Climate Change Conference in November. A further delay or softening should not happen.

The benefits of such a target are enormous. If done correctly, it could, among others,
● save over €850 billion in fossil fuel imports between 2025 and 2040,
● increase competitiveness and create more than 2 million new jobs in clean industries,
● cut household energy bills by up to two-thirds, and
● reduce Europe’s dependency on autocratic countries, strengthening independence and resilience.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/37846820

Europe is moving decisively away from U.S. tech giants toward open-source alternatives, driven by concerns over digital sovereignty and reliability of American companies[^1]. At the 2025 OpenInfra Summit Europe, industry leaders emphasized that this shift isn't about isolation but resilience.

"What we're really looking for is resilience. What we want for our countries, for our companies, for ourselves, is resilience in the face of unforeseen events in a fast-changing world. Open source allows us to be sovereign without being isolated," said OpenInfra Foundation general manager Thierry Carrez[^1].

This transition is already happening. The German state Schleswig-Holstein has replaced Microsoft Exchange and Outlook with open-source email solutions. Similar moves have been made by the Austrian military, Danish government organizations, and the French city of Lyon[^1].

European companies are stepping up to fill the gap with open-source alternatives, including:

• Deutsche Telekom's Open Telekom Cloud
• OVHcloud's sovereign cloud services
• STACKIT and VanillaCore's European-based offerings[^1]

The movement gained additional momentum when the European Commission appointed its first executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security, and democracy in 2024[^1].

[^1]: ZDNet - Europe's plan to ditch US tech giants is built on open source - and it's gaining steam

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/38246640

They’re based out of San Luis Obispo, California, U.S.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/51119369

“We think we’re on the cusp of the next evolution, where AI happens not just in that chatbot and gets naturally integrated into the hundreds of millions of experiences that people use every day,” says Yusuf Mehdi, executive vice president and consumer chief marketing officer at Microsoft, in a briefing with The Verge. “The vision that we have is: let’s rewrite the entire operating system around AI, and build essentially what becomes truly the AI PC.”

...yikes

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.nocturnal.garden/post/276095

Might want to check it out, too.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/36906856

I'm interested, is there something that lists all the success stories of the various organisations across Europe moving from proprietary software to open source software?
For example

• German Schleswig‑Holstein state migrating to Linux, LibreOffice, Thunderbird, and Nextcloud
• Austrian military moving to LibreOffice
• Danish government moving to LibreOffice and Linux
• French City of Lyon moving to Linux and OnlyOffice

Is there some place that tracks all these announcements? And maybe even some further progress on all these projects?
If not, would anyone be willing to help with creation of such list?

Kudos to France and Mistral AI for genuinely creating an amazing European alternative to Chat GPT! Le Chat gives some incredibly detailed and intricate responses that I cannot seem to get from Chat GPT. I am genuinely impressed at the outputs that Le Chat produces to miscellaneous questions. I still use Google Gemini because of their Veo-3 video output, but if it weren't for that, I would not give a penny to Google for their unscrupulous antics. I just hope it is not unusual that Le Chat is now my most preferred AI LLM.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/36516995

Pay. announces today having successfully completed its first Wero transaction with a test merchant.

In the end of 2025, Wero will be available via Pay. in Germany, followed by Belgium in H1 2026. The rollout in the Netherlands will start beginning of H2 2026, in line with iDEAL’s migration to Wero.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.social/post/1307800

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/49627853

You won’t have to enable Windows Backup to get extended Windows 10 security updates in the European Economic Area.

Let’s see about that… telecom always felt old fashioned and stiff.

The two-phase transition from iDEAL to Wero will start next year and last until the end of 2027.

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/225422

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/42296309

Archived

Schleswig-Holstein only has about 3 million inhabitants, and is far from the richest part of Germany, but for the past several years it’s been following an ambitious strategy to wean itself off Big Tech’s software.

This means switching the workplaces of 30,000 civil servants – a headcount roughly comparable to the European Commission – from Microsoft Office software to open alternatives.

In an interview with Euractiv, digital minister Dirk Schrödter said his state is well on the way to achieving this goal. After getting started last March, Schleswig-Holstein is set to reduce the number of Office licences needed for administration by more than two-thirds by the end of this month, he told us.

[...]

The administration will still need a few Office licences to communicate with other regions and Germany’s federal tax administration, according to Schrödter. But the goal is to be able to get rid of all but a very few Microsoft Office licences by 2029.

Instead of sticking with Word and Powerpoint, the state’s civil servants are migrating to LibreOffice. Emails will go through Open Xchange and Thunderbird, rather than Microsoft’s Outlook, and documents will be edited collaboratively via Nextcloud, not Sharepoint.

The migration goes beyond desktop programmes, too. Schleswig-Holstein is running a Linux pilot to replace Windows itself. Currently around 150 people are testing the new operating system, including the digital minister.

[...]

A major focus for the shift is on making the change seamless. “It’s supposed to change as little as possible,” Schrödter said.

Civil servants will have to get used to new desktop icons and tools that are designed slightly differently, but – in theory – the alternatives should be just as comfortable to use.

But like every tech migration, this one is not going off without some pain. Just last week, an association of judges called for a return to Outlook, saying that outages were plaguing civil servants’ new email clients.

While the alternative software that Schleswig-Holstein is adopting is openly available, a lot of work needs to be done to integrate it with the needs of public administration. The region is mostly handing this work to existing contractors, just with new provisions for supporting open document formats.

[...]

New payment system Wero: First retailers opt for PayPal alternative

PayPal, Visa, and others are facing competition: With Wero, Europe wants to launch its own payment service. The first retailers in Germany are already on board—but the question remains: Do customers even want to switch?

The Wero payment project, led by the EPI (European Payments Initiative) banking alliance, is picking up speed. The digital payment system is in direct competition with services such as PayPal, Apple Pay, and Klarna.

The Wero system is based on SEPA real-time payments, which means payments can be sent in a matter of seconds. The aim is to create a Europe-wide alternative to American payment services.

According to Lebensmittel Zeitung, the first German retailers want to integrate the new payment option into their online shops as early as October. “Preparations are underway, and the integration will take place step by step,” says EPI CEO Martina Weimert.

Mediamarkt and Co. want to test Wero

Mediamarkt-Saturn is one of the first major players to want to use Wero. However, there is no exact start date yet. According to industry circles, Otto and Rossmann are also taking a close look at the project.

The focus on a payment system like Wero is no coincidence: PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa have a firm grip on the market. Added to this are geopolitical tensions, which are reinforcing the desire for a European solution. “Developments in recent months show how important it is to have our own European solution in times of transatlantic tensions,” says Weimert in an interview with Lebensmittel Zeitung.

PayPal alternative Wero: Do people really want to switch?

Acceptance remains a sticking point. According to a study by the EHI Institute, many retailers fear that it will be difficult to lure customers away from established systems. “Customers need good reasons to switch from established systems to a new one,” warns Horst Rüter, payment transactions expert at EHI.

In any case, Weros' plans go beyond online retail: starting in 2026, customers will also be able to pay at supermarket checkouts using QR codes or NFC, directly via an app on their smartphones.

According to Bavarian broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk, around 1.8 million people in Germany have registered for Wero so far, with 43 million across Europe. The payment service is particularly widespread in France and Belgium.

Germany, France, and Belgium are currently the only countries offering Wero, but other countries are set to follow.

Source: watson.de Translated with deepl

Some parts are imported but it‘s probably as European as possible at the moment. Details about production can be found here: https://www.nager-it.de/en/maus/fertigung. Unfortunately their shop seem to be only accessible in German.

credit: https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1ngg5r6/fair_and_european_computer_mouse/

Coming from the BYD-discussion, I found a list (in German) of 30 >>affordable<< small EVs .

The Citroen e-C3 peeked out due to its price below 25.000€ so I searched and shared an English review for you guys.

Edit: The manufacturer site is a little cumbersome with the language selection:

• 🇩🇪 https://www.citroen.de/modelle/e-C3.html
• 🇬🇧 https://www.citroen.co.uk/models/new-e-c3.html
• 🇪🇸 https://www.citroen.es/vehiculos-citroen/nuevo-e-c3.html

Wero seems promising. But I am confused as it appears they have acess to my bank account's balance and transaction history. The privacy policy (Archive.org) states on page 4

Purpose: Displaying your account information (performance of a contract – art. 6.1.b of GDPR)

Categories of data processed: Balance and transaction history of your payment account

Retention period: Duration of the contract (the Wero General Terms & Conditions)

The term "payment account" is not properly defined in the document, but I would infer from the first line on page 4 that it is the connected bank account.

This would be significantly more invasive than PayPal. Would be a dealbreaker for me, as I don't even see a plausible reason for doing this.

Their FAQ states the contrary:

Wero does not have access to your transactions or any other account activity beyond the information we need to complete a Wero payment.

Again, "information we need" is quite vague...

Update: Wero confirmed

See my comment below, Wero's Data Processing Offices confirmed via email that they do access your bank's transaction history, depending on which implementation mode your bank chose.

Quite invasive, IMHO

cross-posted from: https://piefed.ca/post/215371

cross-posted from: https://feddit.uk/post/36073569

We must reduce our reliance on Jeff Bezos