Palantir Technologies has spent two years turning European governments into some of its fastest-growing customers, selling the same data-analysis software it built for U.S. intelligence agencies to police forces, health systems and militaries across the continent. On Monday, an alliance of trade unions and civil-society groups told those governments, in writing, to cancel every one of those contracts.
The open letter, signed by organizations from 30 countries plus the European level, calls on governments and EU institutions to terminate all existing contracts with Palantir, bar the company from future public work and build European alternatives. It also urges pension funds and other investors to sell the stock they hold in the company.
The letter’s argument is blunt: an American data company has no place running the public data and law-enforcement systems of a democratic Europe. The signatories point to Palantir’s technology being used by U.S. immigration enforcement, to chief executive Alex Karp’s outspoken support for Israel, and to the company’s closeness to the Trump administration, which they say makes European dependence unwise given the president’s willingness to weaponize economic relationships.
Palantir’s co-founder, Peter Thiel, was the first major Silicon Valley figure to endorse Donald Trump. The company’s software has long been used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military, associations that have made it a recurring target of privacy and human-rights campaigns in Europe for years.
What has changed is how much Palantir’s European business has grown, and how much political opposition that growth has attracted. The company is now among the 50 largest public companies in the world, with a market value above $320 billion, and it has won contracts across health care, defense and policing in France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands and Britain. In the UK alone it holds roughly 600 million pounds in public contracts, including a 330 million pound patient-data deal with the National Health Service that has drawn petitions signed by more than 200,000 people. NATO cleared its military software for use this summer.
Palantir’s footing in Europe was built quietly over more than a decade. French security services signed on after the 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, and several governments turned to the company’s health software during the Covid-19 pandemic. Those deals were struck, in large part, because no local vendor could do the work at the same scale. The open letter argues that is no longer true, and it names the European firms it believes can now replace the American incumbent.
The opposition is no longer limited to activist campaigns. This month, French defense company Thales unveiled its own alternative to Palantir’s military software, and France’s security services are reported to be preparing to replace Palantir with Chapsvision, a Paris-based rival with more than a thousand employees that is now pushing into Germany, where regional governments are debating their ties to the American firm. Other would-be challengers include Britain’s Quantexa and Ireland’s Siren and Octostar, all pitching themselves as sovereign alternatives.
The campaign is also being fought on taxes. In August, a report commissioned by European public-service unions and produced by the Centre for International Corporate Tax Accountability and Research concluded that Palantir had avoided at least 12 million euros in European taxes by shifting profits to the United States, where it pays no federal income tax. The European Federation of Public Service Unions, which represents 8 million members, said European taxpayers were funding a company that contributes little back to the public purse.
Palantir has pushed back. Its UK chief executive has publicly disputed the campaigners’ claims, and the company says its partnerships in Europe reinforce a common commitment to the values that strengthen European society. But the letter signals that the fight is moving from the streets and the courts into the procurement offices where the contracts are actually signed.
The company’s problem is that the campaigns are now converging with a broader political mood in Europe about dependence on American technology. Sovereign-challenger rhetoric, once confined to cloud computing and semiconductors, has reached the niche Palantir occupies: the software that runs the state’s own data. Governments have tolerated that dependence when the alternative was building something from nothing. The letter’s signatories are betting that enough of them now believe the alternative exists.
Whether that bet pays off will show up in contract renewals, not press releases. Palantir’s European revenue is still climbing, and no government named in the letter has yet said it will walk away. But for a company whose European growth depends on keeping quiet about what its software does for the state, the loudest season of opposition it has faced may be only the beginning.
