European governments are removing WhatsApp and Signal from their systems.
Governments in France, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Belgium have begun launching internal messaging services for officials to exchange sensitive information, in an effort to stop staff from using popular encrypted apps and switch to local alternatives they can control. The NATO defense alliance also has its own messenger, and the European Commission plans to make the switch by the end of the year.
The move towards government-controlled messaging apps is part of Europe's search for alternatives to American technology, driven by fears of strategic dependence on Washington. WhatsApp is owned by American tech giant Meta, while Signal is run by a US-based non-profit and managed by a large community of open-source software enthusiasts.
The push to disassociate from US companies also reflects growing recognition among governments of the vulnerabilities of major messaging apps for sharing sensitive information between politicians.
“Our communication currently often takes place through platforms over which we have no control,” Willemijn Aerdts, the Netherlands’ digital minister, told POLITICO in a statement. “In a world where technology is increasingly being used as a tool of power, this poses a risk.”
Brandon De Waele, director of Belgian Secure Communications, the Belgian federal government agency responsible for its new secure app, said: “Everyone in Europe is becoming more and more aware of sovereignty… For us it is data sovereignty.”
WhatsApp and Signal have faced cybersecurity challenges in recent weeks. Last month, dozens of cybersecurity agencies warned that Russian hacking groups were targeting political and government officials on the messengers with high-level phishing attacks.
The risks also became apparent in Brussels: The European Commission told some of its top officials to shut down a group on the messaging app Signal, POLITICO reported this month, and the EU was the victim of a series of cybersecurity breaches that affected, among other things, its mobile device management system.
'It's just not built for this'
Belgium was the latest European government to unveil a secure internal messaging service last month, for use by public officials for sensitive but unclassified information. Members of the federal government – including Prime Minister Bart De Wever – are now encouraged to use an app called BEAM, which comes with all the features of popular apps like WhatsApp and Signal, but operates under government control.
There is no suggestion that apps like Signal and WhatsApp, which use end-to-end encryption, the gold standard for messaging security, are any more insecure than their alternatives. Much of what is driving this shift is the need for features such as access controls, the ability to only allow conversations between certain people, and control over metadata that shows where and when calls and messages are made and sent.
Using consumer apps for large organizations is “really a risky move,” said Benjamin Schilz, CEO of Wire, a secure communications app used by the German government. They “are simply not built for this.”
Some of these features would have helped protect against a recent Russian espionage campaign carried out through WhatsApp and Signal, said Belgium's De Waele. "With us, because it's a closed environment with only government employees, you can avoid that too," he said.
For transparency activists, the move to government-controlled apps is long overdue. Democracy groups have complained that policies on end-to-end encrypted communications and cybersecurity, such as disappearing messages in consumer apps, have overshadowed important decisions.
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last year faced a vote of no confidence (which was ultimately unsuccessful) partly due to access to messages she exchanged with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla ahead of a multi-billion euro vaccine deal, which she did not disclose.
Support for Trump
Those working with European governments on domestic solutions have noticed a clear change since United States President Donald Trump returned to office early last year.
“The difference we’ve really noticed over the last 12 months is the urgency from governments,” said Matthew Hodgson, chief executive of Element, a company that built technology used by many European governments for secure messaging apps.
Hodgson and others attribute the sudden acceleration to specific events, such as Signalgate, when senior Trump administration officials exchanged classified military plans on Signal, and U.S. sanctions against the International Criminal Court that resulted in the shutdown of a prosecutor’s email last year. A major outage of Amazon Web Services in October also revealed with startling clarity Europe’s dependence on American technology.
For others, the decision is more practical than philosophical. “This trend is about reconciling a gap between how official communications should happen and how they are actually happening in practice,” said Lindsay Gorman, managing director at the German Marshall Fund.
"The biggest move is simply [addressing] the discrepancy between how the government should communicate and how people are simply communicating," Gorman said.Politico
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