This story has been translated into English from this article which was originally published in Polish. The entire translation and editing process was overseen by a human editor. Some facts were provided additionally in contrast to Polish language version to provide more context especially for non-Polish readers.
French Senate has organised hearings on 10 and 11 June 2025 on France’s ongoing digital sovereignty process. One of attendees was a legal director of Microsoft’s French branch, Anton Carniaux.
Asked about guarantees on French citizens’ data storage security at Microsoft, he responded that Microsoft is „unable to fulfil the promise on that matter”.
The question asked focused on data transfers to the USA when Microsoft is legally compelled to do so.
This is due to the CLOUD Act, which assigns a legal responsibility on American technology firms to provide personal data to American authorities regardless of where the servers are located and of the local laws currently in motion.
While Carniaux’s response did not address the aforementioned question, he still testified that Microsoft has „a rigorous internal policy”, under which the tech giant decides how to handle each case of data access by the United States’ government.
ppc.land quoted Pierre Lagarde, another Microsoft director, who said that „Microsoft has pledged to introduce systems minimising the factor of data stored by Microsoft leaving the EU by 2022,” and by January 2025 he upheld these words by adding that „no data stored by Microsoft leave the EU member countries’ borders.”
The French Senate has held an extraordinary plenary session about Health Data Hub project enacted in 2019, around which controversies have arisen — one of which was the usage of Microsoft Azure hosting, according to Luis Rijo of ppc.land website.
The Health Data Hub project has been launched in order to „help improve French medical research”.
As the investigation led by Simon Uzenat’s digital sovereignty commission progressed, findings suggested that Microsoft could be „favoured” over the French technology firms, such as OVH or Scaleway.
Uzenat has said at the time about „inconsistencies, delays and contradictory steps taken by the French government coming to the France’s digital sovereignty.”
Representatives from both OVH and Scaleway expressed their firms’ „readiness” to take up on the tasks which were ordered to be handled by Microsoft instead. However, only consultations were supposed to be offered to these corporations at the time of decision making processes.
Five years after the Health Data Hub has been officially enacted, a law mandating a migration of sensitive data of French citizens to French technology firms has been set in motion. Its execution, however, is „questionable” according to ppc.land website.
The Polish perspective
In Poland, according to our best knowledge, no similar actions on a scale similar to what happens in France are undertaken.
In March 2025 we have published an original report on Microsoft’s dependence in Warsaw’s schools. The report is still yet to be translated from Polish.
Despite our efforts to reach out to Warsaw’s local authorities to obtain an explanation or invite a representative to an interview, we faced the silence each time.
On the Polish central government level, Donald-Tusk-led government has signed multiple contracts with American technology conglomerates in recent months. This has been proven contradictory to the promise of „disregarding [American] Big Tech firms” laid out by Krzysztof Gawkowski, who is a current minister of digital affairs and a deputy prime minister.
The policy direction of the Polish Ministry of Digital Affairs appears to have shifted following these events.
In February 2025, when the memorandum signed between Tusk and Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai has been revealed, Gawkowski said that Poland should „reap benefits from the new investments”, and „be presented as an European Silicon Valley”.
Few months later, a similar agreement between the Polish government and two most prominent American technology firms — Google and Microsoft — was signed, officially to „aid” in running the „PW eSkills” digital competences programme.
Polish MoDA, when asked under the public record request on the programme about the potential beneficiaries, has said that „to the fullest extent the entire Polish society will reap benefits from the PW eSkills programme.”
However, it has not provided estimates on how many people may be trained in the introductory runs of training courses — in fact repeating the claims laid out on the government’s website in the statement.
We’ve also published several reports on ‘Kontrabanda’ highlighting how the Polish MoDA provided contradictory responses to the website’s editor-in-chief — Oliwier Jaszczyszyn — each time it responded to the suggestions laid out by him.
Jaszczyszyn suggested that the government body should consider taking up on f.i. enforcing the RSS channel access mandate on Polish government websites — with Polish MoDA eventually turning the proposal down.
As the time progressed, a second response has confirmed the claim made up by Jaszczyszyn, who said that claims of Polish MoDA about „excruciatingly low interest on RSS channels” were based upon „non-existent RSS channels’ data.”
Microsoft’s Polish branch newsroom has been asked for comment by „Kontrabanda” about the similar pledges in light of the Carniaux’s testimony and is awaiting the response.
Sources
An introductory photo has been taken by Coolcaesar and is available on Wikimedia Commons under the conditions of a Creative Commons BY-SA 4.0 International licence. The article was made upon sources listed below:
- Ministerstwo Cyfryzacji opierało się na nieistniejących przykładach kanałów RSS, udzielając mi odpowiedzi, published 1/03/2025 by Oliwier Jaszczyszyn on kontrabanda.net
- Ministerstwo Cyfryzacji odpowiada na petycję w sprawie zaleceń dla podmiotów publicznych, published 21/02/2025 by Oliwier Jaszczyszyn on kontrabanda.net
- Microsoft can’t protect French data from US government access, published 18/07/2025 by Luis Rijo on ppc.land
- Audition de MM. Anton Carniaux, directeur des affaires publiques et juridiques, et Pierre Lagarde, directeur technique du secteur public, de Microsoft France, published on senat.fr
- Gawkowski: W Ministerstwie Cyfryzacji zdanie Big Techu będzie na ostatnim miejscu, published 14/12/2023 on wyborcza.biz
- Statement released to a „Kontrabanda” editor by 14/07/2025 by Polish MoDA signed as BM.WP.0122.270.2025 under the terms of public record request
- Big Techy w Polsce. Gawkowski: Polska ma na tym korzystać, published 12/02/2025 by Oskar Klimczuk on cyberdefence24.pl