EU Parliament to Switch from Google to French Search Engine Qwant in Tech Sovereignty Push as Brussels Tightens Grip on Big Tech Data

The European Parliament has decided to switch its default search engine from Google to Qwant, a French-owned search engine, in a move explicitly framed as a tech sovereignty initiative — the EU's push to reduce dependency on US technology platforms for sensitive institutional functions. The decision signals a further escalation of the EU's strategic approach to digital infrastructure, separate from its regulatory enforcement agenda. The shift comes amid intensifying EU scrutiny of Google's market dominance. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in the UK has simultaneously ordered Google to change how it uses publishers' content in its AI-powered search results, exercising powers available to it where it determines that a company holds strategic market status — a designation that allows bespoke, firm-specific conduct rules. The CMA's intervention gives news publishers the power to block their content from being used in Google's AI-generated summaries, a decision with potential global ramifications for how content licensing and AI training data rights are negotiated. Separately, the European Commission has flagged that the energy price surge linked to the Iran war could cost the EU up to 1.3 million jobs, according to Commission analysis — underscoring the macroeconomic urgency behind both energy security and tech sovereignty as intertwined EU policy priorities. Stakeholders including the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA) and 50 other organisations have called on EU and UK policymakers to clarify emissions trading arrangements ahead of the upcoming EU-UK Summit, with particular concern about regulatory uncertainty at the EU-UK ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) interface.