Microsoft outage hits half of Belgian SMEs, exposing EU tech reliance

A major Microsoft outage affecting Outlook, Teams, and Copilot disrupted numerous Belgian businesses on Friday, with the UNIZO employers' organization estimating that one in two small and medium-sized enterprises was impacted. The failure halted email communications, blocked access to cloud-stored files, and forced companies like real estate agency Expertissimo and travel agencies to resort to phone calls and WhatsApp. The incident coincided with an informal EU summit in Dublin on artificial intelligence, highlighting Europe's technological dependence on American giants. Experts note that while European alternatives exist, the continent spends roughly €264 billion annually on foreign digital services, and the outage exposed a systemic vulnerability from relying on a few dominant providers. The European Commission is proposing to reserve sensitive public contracts for European cloud and AI suppliers.