In brief: Bavaria terminates a planned multi-million euro contract with Microsoft and instead opts for open-source solutions to achieve independence from US vendors and better data control.
Bavaria’s Digital Ministry has officially dissolved the planned framework agreement with Microsoft for the Microsoft 365 productivity suite. The state government will operate its administrative IT in the future on the basis of open software instead of relying on proprietary US solutions.
The Free State of Bavaria had planned a framework agreement with Microsoft for five years for the comprehensive introduction of Microsoft 365 across the entire state administration. According to media reports, the contract was valued at just under one billion euros. Bavaria’s Digital Ministry under Fabian Mehring has now definitively ended this deal.
The decision was preceded by a prolonged departmental dispute: Finance Minister Albert Füracker advocated for consolidating existing Microsoft contracts to negotiate more favorable terms with the vendor. Digital Minister Mehring, however, pushed through a fundamental shift towards open software. Mehring justified this by arguing that with free software, Bavaria becomes more independent of price dictates from individual vendors, administrative data are better protected, and IT operations can be maintained even in exceptional situations.
Bavaria is not alone in this course: Schleswig-Holstein already uses open-source solutions at four out of five government workplaces. Munich’s city council decided in May 2026 to make free software the standard for new purchases. At the federal level, a regulation has been in force since March stipulating that government documents may only be distributed in open formats.
The driving motive is less a matter of cost than rather data security. The US Cloud Act permits US authorities to demand access to user data from US companies, regardless of storage location. An additional risk lies in the fact that Washington could instruct technology companies at any time to shut down their services outside the US — with the consequence that European administrations and defense ministries would suddenly be left without functioning IT. Studies show that a substantial proportion of European defense authorities are dependent on US cloud infrastructure.
Source: www.it-daily.net · Published June 3, 2026
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