European Commission officials have dismissed a newly imposed alternative to Microsoft Teams, with one describing the tool as “absolute shit” on an internal message board, according to exchanges seen by Politico.
The Commission introduced Element Pro over the summer as a “sovereign back-up to Teams”, an internal staff memo says. The software is built on Matrix, an open communications protocol already used by several European governments.
Teams remains the institution’s main communications system.
Element Pro is described in the memo as an “internal back-up … that helps ensure our business continuity” if there is a disruption and the US-based service becomes unavailable.
Staff can use it for audio and video calls, file transfers and project “rooms”, functions the memo compares with chats and channels in Microsoft 365 Teams.
The Commission hosts the system on its own infrastructure rather than on Microsoft’s cloud, which it says gives it greater control over communications data.
That argument has not persuaded everyone using it.
“I don’t understand the added value here,” one official wrote on the internal board. A second called the tool “absolute shit”. A third said that, judging by how Element Pro works compared with Teams, the United States would “instantly win the war” if it ever switched off its technology.
The three officials spoke anonymously.
A fourth wrote that with Teams “all we have is a guarantee that Microslop will not peek inside”, in an apparent reference to Microsoft.
The rollout sits inside a wider Commission drive to cut reliance on American technology. On June 3 the Commission put forward a technology sovereignty package that included a semiconductor plan, a Cloud and AI Development Act and an open source strategy for public administrations.
A July memo told staff that digital sovereignty had become “increasingly important” and, in practice, meant “having greater control over our data and systems so that we can reduce risks and limit disruption to our work”.
The institution’s handling of Big Tech software has already drawn censure from inside the EU. On March 11, 2024 the European Data Protection Supervisor found that the Commission’s use of Microsoft 365 breached the data protection rules that govern the bloc’s own institutions, citing purpose limitation, international data transfers and unauthorised disclosures of personal data. The supervisor closed the case on July 11, 2025 after the Commission reported corrective measures.
Element is a British company whose software is already used by governments and public bodies in Europe. The German armed forces’ BwMessenger, built on the same protocol, has had more than 100,000 active users since 2020, and the French public sector’s Tchap service more than 300,000.
Element chief executive Matthew Hodgson told Politico, on a call made with the software, that the Commission was still trialling it.
“Obviously there are going to be some teething issues,” he said, adding that switching from a heavily used programme such as Teams always produced “cognitive dissonance”, if only because the buttons were in a different place.
He said the United Nations and NATO also use Element Pro, and that the company wanted feedback “good or bad”.
A company spokesperson said the Commission had asked Element not to share certain details of the subscription.
The EU has also been promoting other digital products that are not US based.
The European Commission and the presidents of the three main EU institutions joined W, a privately owned Swedish social network billed as a European alternative to X, even as their audiences on rival platforms remain a fraction of those on the American service. Those signing up included Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa.
W Social, incorporated in Sweden and backed by Nordic private investors, was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January and held its beta launch in Brussels on June 17.
It uses the same underlying protocol as Bluesky, hosts data in Europe under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and requires on-device identity checks so that accounts belong to real people.
Mastodon, the German open-source network, is the other European service the Commission has favoured.
The follower counts suggest the diversification is still largely symbolic.
The institution is not alone in trying to step back from US conferencing tools.
France has said millions of civil servants will stop using American video-conferencing software, including Teams and Zoom, by 2027 and move to a domestic alternative. Civil service minister David Amiel said on January 27 that the state would switch to Visio, a tool hosted on the French cloud provider Outscale and already being tested by about 40,000 officials. The government put the saving at about €1 million a year for every 100,000 users.
Austria’s military replaced Microsoft Office with the German-made LibreOffice in December 2024, completing a switch that covered about 16,000 workstations.
Do you know how bad a product must be to be called 'absolute shit' compared to Microsoft Teams? https://t.co/AIzeUNWZjr
— Matthias Schmidt (@eurofounder) October 1, 2026
