By Derek Scally
Publication Date: 2026-02-14 06:00:00
Hanging in the air at this year’s Munich Security Conference is a new Schleswig-Holstein question. The term once applied to a prolonged 19th-century tug-of-war between imperial Germany and Denmark over the territory connecting the two kingdoms.
Today’s Schleswig-Holstein question is no longer about land, but is still about sovereignty: digital sovereignty.
Put simply: if US president Donald Trump takes against an EU country, leader, judge or private person – and leans on US tech companies to block their email or web service access – is it wise for Europe to keep all its digital eggs in Microsoft Office and Amazon web server baskets?
Schleswig-Holstein thinks not. The northern German state is just three-quarters the size of Leinster but, when it comes to digital sovereignty, it thinks big.
Last October the state government allowed its licences to lapse on Microsoft 365, the popular web-based office suite. More than 40,000 civil servants, politicians and other public servants…
