Europe Tries to Break Its Palantir Habit — But Can It?

A quiet rebellion is spreading through European capitals against one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful data firms. Officials in France, Germany, Spain and beyond are moving to reduce their reliance on Palantir Technologies, the U.S. data-analytics company that has burrowed deep into the continent’s policing, defense, health and intelligence systems — and they are discovering just how difficult it is to walk away.

A “Sovereign Digital Backbone”

The push gained momentum last month when French and German security officials floated plans for a homegrown alternative to American data infrastructure, according to reporting from POLITICO. Insiders on both sides of the Atlantic reportedly understood the message as a direct signal that Europe wants out of its Palantir dependency.

The moves are already visible on the ground. Spain’s government, under Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, has directed state-linked firms to exclude Palantir from future public contracts. France’s domestic intelligence service chose the French company ChapsVision over Palantir for a major contract. And in the United Kingdom, a bigger reckoning may be coming in February 2027, when the Labour government led by Andy Burnham will have to decide the fate of Palantir’s roughly £330 million data-platform contract with the National Health Service.

Hard to Quit

Even so, few dispute that Palantir’s technology is unusually effective. French digital-sovereignty advocate Philippe Latombe compared the company’s grip to that of an addictive product, arguing its long experience across many clients has made its data-processing tools difficult to match.

Palantir’s leadership has shown little concern about the European backlash. CEO Alex Karp dismissed the idea that European rivals pose a serious threat during a recent television appearance, while ChapsVision chief executive Olivier Dellenbach told POLITICO his firm has benefited from a strong wave of anti-Palantir sentiment — though he cautioned that real digital sovereignty will require sustained public investment, not just opposition to one company.

Several European nations, including Belgium, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania and the Netherlands, alongside Canada, have reportedly expressed interest in a rival system built by French defense firm Thales. Yet NATO’s own supreme allied commander for transformation, Admiral Pierre Vandier, has acknowledged that the alliance currently has nothing that matches Palantir’s battlefield AI capabilities — from processing satellite imagery to recommending strikes and automatically triggering munitions resupply.

From Crisis Response to Permanent Fixture

Palantir’s foothold in Europe was built gradually, often in the aftermath of emergencies. The company entered France following the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks, signing a contract with domestic intelligence in 2016. In Germany, police in Hesse adopted Palantir’s Gotham platform in 2017 under the name “hessenDATA.” In Britain, Palantir’s relationship with the NHS reportedly began with a token £1 fee to help manage data during the Covid-19 pandemic.

That pattern has left the company’s software embedded not just in government but also in European industry — Airbus, BMW, BP and media group Axel Springer are all customers of Palantir’s Foundry platform.

Ideology and Sovereignty

The debate over Palantir in Europe is not purely technical. Co-founded by CEO Alex Karp and billionaire investor Peter Thiel — a prominent backer of U.S. President Donald Trump — the company has faced criticism over its work with U.S. immigration enforcement and the Israeli military. French lawmaker Aurélien Saintoul has gone so far as to accuse the company’s founders of pursuing a political project he labeled “technofascist,” arguing that Thiel’s worldview separates the defense of freedom from democracy itself.

A Palantir spokesperson rejected such characterizations as absurd, pointing out that similar criticism has also come from Russian state officials, and emphasized the company’s support for Ukraine’s military as evidence of where its loyalties lie.

An Uphill Battle

Even as governments talk sovereignty, European banks and asset managers have reportedly been increasing their investment in Palantir over the past year, according to the investigative outlet Follow the Money — a sign of the tension between political rhetoric and market reality.

Meanwhile, Palantir’s ambitions in Europe are growing rather than shrinking. On July 1, its Maven Smart System — originally developed for the Pentagon — became fully operational within NATO’s classified network, linking command-and-control systems across the alliance. And American rivals are following Palantir’s playbook: Amazon Web Services recently pledged $1 billion to embed engineering teams directly inside client organizations, while Microsoft announced a $2.5 billion effort to deploy thousands of specialists into customer operations.

German Green MEP Hannah Neumann summed up the stakes for critics: allowing public institutions to depend on software controlled by a small number of U.S. tech billionaires risks handing part of the democratic state over to a private actor accountable to neither voters nor parliament.

For now, though, Europe’s alternatives remain fragmented, and few dispute that no domestic competitor yet matches Palantir’s scale or track record — meaning any real move toward digital sovereignty is likely to be slow, expensive, and contested every step of the way.