The European Parliament replaced Google with Qwant as the default search engine across all 720 MEP and staff computers from Thursday 4 June, applying the change to Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox and citing digital sovereignty and data protection1. Qwant is a French search engine built as a privacy-preserving, European-sovereign alternative to Google; users can still revert manually. This is the first concrete procurement action to follow the 3 June tech sovereignty package, and it lands while Google already faces a Digital Markets Act self-preferencing fine awaiting a Commission decision. The switch is modest in scale, a default setting rather than a ban, but it shows the sovereignty doctrine being applied inside the institution that helped write it.
Parliament drops Google for Qwant search
The European Parliament made Qwant the default search engine for all 720 MEPs and their staff from 4 June, the first concrete procurement move after the sovereignty package.
The European Parliament set Qwant as default search for 720 MEPs, its first post-package procurement move.
Deep Analysis
The European Parliament, which is the EU's elected assembly with 720 members and thousands of staff, switched its default internet search engine from Google to Qwant on 4 June. Qwant is a French search engine designed to be private and not track users. Users can still switch back to Google if they want. The Parliament cited digital sovereignty (keeping EU data away from foreign companies) and privacy as the reasons. Critics point out that Qwant partially uses Microsoft's Bing service for some of its search results, which means some query data still reaches a US company. The practical significance is more about what it signals than what it changes: when the EU's own Parliament chooses a European search engine, it makes it easier for national governments to justify the same choice.
- Precedent
The European Parliament's Qwant procurement record creates a directly citable sovereign-alternative deployment that national government IT procurement teams can reference when evaluating non-Google search options.
- Risk
Qwant's partial Bing index dependency means the Parliament's privacy rationale is structurally incomplete; if this is challenged in trilogue or by civil society, it could undermine rather than reinforce the CADA sovereignty-tier framework.
Update #8 · Sovereignty law adopted; $40bn US chip buy
AI-assisted, human-edited under the editorial responsibility of Bannermedia Ltd. Reviewed by Ed Woodcock on 10 June 2026. Editorial standards.