European Parliament Switches to French Search Engine Qwant

The European Parliament will replace Google with the French search engine Qwant as the default in its Microsoft Edge and Mozilla Firefox browsers from 4 June.

The move is part of a broader effort to reduce European institutions' reliance on digital tools from outside the EU and to promote European privacy services. The change will be applied automatically for users, who will still be able to select a different search engine if they choose.

The decision comes as the European Commission prepares new measures on chips, cloud services and artificial intelligence (AI) as part of its "Buy and Use European" initiative.

The European Parliament has 720 members and thousands of assistants and administrative staff. Euractiv was first to report the planned change.

(reuters, bak)