Jan 28, 2026 09:57:00

The French government plans to switch to the domestically developed tool 'Visio' for Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, etc.

David Amiel , Minister of Public Activities and Public Accounts in charge of civil service and state reform in France, announced that Visio , a video conferencing tool developed by France's Digital Interministerial Directorate General (DINUM) , will be introduced in government agencies by 2027. The aim is to eliminate the use of non-European solutions and utilize powerful, independent tools to ensure the security and confidentiality of public electronic communications.

Souveraineté numérique : l'État généralise « Visio », sa solution de visioconférence sécurisée et souveraine à destination des agents publics – Presse – Ministère des Finances
https://presse.economie.gouv.fr/souverainete-numerique-letat-generalise-visio-sa-solution-de-visioconference-securisee-et-souveraine-a-destination-des-agents-publics/

La France veut remplacer Microsoft Teams et Google Meet par « Visio », un outil souverain pour les appels vidéo - Numerama
https://www.numerama.com/cyberguerre/2167301-la-france-veut-remplacer-microsoft-teams-et-google-meet-par-visio-un-outil-souverain-pour-les-appels-video.html

Bercy annonce vouloir remplacer Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams et les autres logiciels de vidéoconférence par une « solution souveraine » d'ici à 2027.

Au vu du contexte géopolitique, la décision me semble logique, d'autant plus que le logiciel existe déjà (mais n'est pas…

— Nicolas Lellouche (@LelloucheNico) January 26, 2026

On January 26, 2025, French Minister Amiel, along with DINUM Director Stephanie Char and CNRS Deputy Director Alain Choux, visited the CNRS Institute for Integrated Cellular Biology (I2BC) to announce a strategy to make Visio the sole videoconferencing tool used by government agencies.

As of the time of writing, French government agencies are using a variety of video conferencing tools, including Microsoft Teams , Zoom , GoTo Meeting , and Webex . Minister Amie points out that this 'creates problems such as weakened data security, strategic dependency on external infrastructure, additional financial costs, and complicated inter-agency collaboration.' Therefore, Minister Amie and others argue that the aim is to strengthen digital resilience by gradually introducing an integrated solution managed by the government and based on French technology over the next few years.

Visio is a video conferencing tool that started as a pilot program in 2025 and already has 40,000 regular users at the time of writing, and is used by 200,000 French government employees.

Visio
https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/produits/visio

The CNRS, the French National Health Insurance Fund, the General Directorate for Public Finance (DGFiP), and the Ministry of the Armed Forces have been selected as the first government institutions to implement Visio nationwide by the first quarter of 2026. The CNRS plans to replace Zoom with Visio by the end of March 2026. CNRS employs 34,000 staff and 120,000 researchers in its research units.

Visio, which was introduced with the support of ANSSI , the French national digital security strategy agency, can provide confidentiality assurance functions tailored to the needs of civil servants. Its technical features include the following three features:

- Data will be sovereign -hosted by Outscale, a subsidiary of Dassault Systèmes, which is SecNumCloud certified by ANSSI.
- Equipped with an AI meeting transcription function that uses speaker separation technology developed by Pyannote, a French startup company.
By the summer of 2026, we plan to realize a real-time subtitle display function using technology developed by Kyutai, a French AI research institute.

The adoption of Visio will also enable the elimination of paid software licenses, such as Zoom, which is expected to result in significant cost savings. Minister Amiel and his colleagues noted that for every 100,000 users who switch from licensed solutions, annual cost savings of 1 million euros (approximately 180 million yen) can be expected.

French media outlet Numerama describes Visio as 'a 100% French solution' and 'not just a French version of Zoom, but software designed with multiple French layers.'

However, he also pointed out that 'there is a lot of work to be done.' 'Teams is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, Zoom has become a verb in everyday conversation, and Google Meet is available via a simple link. Eliminating these tools won't be easy, because habits are hard to change.'