The #ICC joins a growing list of EU-based institutions that has abandoned or is abandoning US-based FascTech and move towards EU-based open-source solutions instead.
The reason in this case isn’t only saved budget.
Karim Khan, chief prosecutor for the ICC, lost access to his Outlook mailbox in May 2025 after delivering the arrest warrant against Netanyahu - on top of getting his bank account frozen.
Imagine a world where UN officers for the highest criminal court can’t do their job because a single American company can coerce their decisions by simply cutting access to their digital lives.
The ICC is therefore switching from #Microsoft 365 to #OpenDesk, a FOSS solution mostly developed in Germany.
The fall of American Big Tech will happen one step at the time, one revoked license at the time, one lost user at the time.
After 15 years spent evangelizing that there’s no technology outside of their clouds, people are finally realizing that solutions are possible - and those solutions both save them money and restore their sovereignty and ownership over their digital lives. The same tipping points that led to their success can also lead to their demise.
There’s an eternal technological pendulum between centralization and decentralization that keeps swinging whenever the disadvantages of one end start outweighing the disadvantages of the other end. And it will keep swinging, no matter how big the American FascTech has become.
https://www.binnenlandsbestuur.nl/digitaal/internationaal-strafhof-neemt-afscheid-van-microsoft-365
