It is more like self imposed sanction against US made products. There are now tons of open source operating systems and applications that can replace Microsoft products, which are basically some old programs. The replacements cost vastly less for use and support.

Citation needed on the costs vastly less to support and use.

Good thing the Netherlands isn’t the most critical single node for advanced chip equipment, cause that could become awkward.

Oh wait, it is.

But it’s ok because Us President has made it clear the the USA doesn’t need anything Europe has. So, not a problem.

I still don't get why EU governments and agencies don't standardize around an already existing industry proven OS the EU already has domestically, which is SUSE, and need to each go reinventing the wheel their own way, which leads to higher costs and more fragmentation across the EU.

I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems. You can just do things when you want to. You literally have that power. Exercise it for once FFS.

Might be related to NixOS being strongly related to Netherlands and them picking local

Yeah well that's why the EU federal idea is and will be a failure. It wishes to be the challenger to the US and China hegemony in theory, but then every individual country wants to be its own special mini-boss in its own playground hoping they'll be at the top of the helm, that develops and uses its own separate things that will hopefully get adopted by the other EU members.

I heard the reason was that NL doesn't know if SUSE will be sold off again and might end up in the hands of some US PE, but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies

The Dutch government can famously prevent sales of German and Luxembourgish companies yes.

I meant the EU, at EU level, not the Dutch government. Also it's not like the Dutch government can't cooperate with the other EU members like Germany and Luxembourg on such vital topics. Unless of course trust inside the EU is so lackluster that the Dutch government can't be sure where Germany and Luxembourg will stand, in which case it's already over for the EU.

Does the EU have the power to block sales of companies on national security grounds? Or to get member states to standardise on software?

Its probably a good thing they do not have a standard, or at this point it would be Windows and pushing change through at the EU level would not be fast.

but here's the thing, you're the government, you can just block the sale of companies related to sovereign national security like those making operating systems

Last time I looked it was a Swedish owned German company. The government of the Netherlands has limited power there. Given its history and performance its quite likely to get sold and might end up in American or Chinese hands or anything really.

No problem. After the next election in the Netherlands, Microsoft only needs to promise to build a local headquarters there and the future government will roll back to Windows at twice the previous cost, which is exactly what happened in Munich.