Europe's digital dependence · read from public DNS · 2026-09-27
99% of the 1195 European institutions and listed companies we checked hand at least one core service to an American company.
Email, office software, DNS and websites. For each organisation we asked the public DNS who answers — the same question every mail server on the internet asks it — and followed the answer to the company that owns the machine. American companies answer to the CLOUD Act, wherever their data centre stands.
1195 organisations · 27217 DNS questions · 614 networks · scan 9
01 · Layers
Four layers, and who owns each
Every organisation counts once per layer, coloured by where the company that runs it answers to. Hover a band for the numbers; switch the group above.
02 · Everyone
Every organisation, one square
Each square is an organisation, sorted by who runs the layer you pick. Hover for the evidence, click to open it.
The chart needs JavaScript; the table below has the same numbers.
03 · Providers
The landlords
The companies the most organisations rent a layer from. A network nobody has named yet is listed as its registration says.
04 · Countries
Country by country
The share of each country's organisations that rent the layer you pick from an American company. Listed companies count where they are headquartered; each government and central bank counts for its own country. Click a country for its list.
05 · Cohorts
Index by index, tier by tier
Share of each group with an American company in each layer. Click a column to sort.
| Group | Orgs | Any US | Office suite | DNS | Website | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euronext Amsterdam — AEX | 25 | 100% | 92% | 96% | 80% | 96% |
| Euronext Brussels — BEL 20 | 21 | 100% | 71% | 100% | 57% | 57% |
| Euronext Paris — CAC 40 | 41 | 100% | 71% | 100% | 66% | 90% |
| Euronext Lisbon — PSI | 15 | 93% | 80% | 93% | 33% | 53% |
| Euronext Dublin — ISEQ 20 | 20 | 100% | 65% | 100% | 75% | 95% |
| Deutsche Börse — DAX | 42 | 100% | 74% | 95% | 69% | 90% |
| Wiener Börse — ATX | 22 | 100% | 77% | 100% | 27% | 68% |
| Borsa Italiana — FTSE MIB | 41 | 100% | 88% | 100% | 41% | 68% |
| BME — IBEX 35 | 35 | 100% | 91% | 100% | 49% | 77% |
| Nasdaq Stockholm — OMXS30 | 32 | 100% | 84% | 97% | 62% | 91% |
| Nasdaq Copenhagen — OMXC25 | 25 | 100% | 96% | 96% | 64% | 80% |
| Nasdaq Helsinki — OMXH25 | 25 | 100% | 96% | 100% | 52% | 88% |
| Warsaw Stock Exchange — WIG20 | 20 | 95% | 40% | 95% | 40% | 30% |
| Athens Exchange — Large Cap | 20 | 100% | 75% | 90% | 85% | 100% |
| Central and Eastern Europe — lead indices | 37 | 100% | 57% | 100% | 46% | 46% |
| SIX Swiss Exchange — SMI | 22 | 100% | 77% | 100% | 77% | 91% |
| Oslo Børs — OBX | 25 | 100% | 96% | 100% | 52% | 88% |
| London Stock Exchange — FTSE 100 | 100 | 100% | 73% | 96% | 81% | 97% |
| EU institutions and bodies | 17 | 100% | 59% | 88% | 12% | 82% |
| EU agencies and joint undertakings | 51 | 100% | 84% | 98% | 57% | 76% |
| Governments of the member states | 27 | 85% | 22% | 74% | 26% | 44% |
| National central banks | 27 | 96% | 30% | 93% | 33% | 52% |
| Ministries | 12 | 100% | 0% | 92% | 8% | 92% |
| Agencies and independent bodies | 137 | 98% | 50% | 88% | 25% | 61% |
| Provinces | 12 | 100% | 83% | 100% | 25% | 58% |
| Water boards | 21 | 100% | 90% | 100% | 10% | 57% |
| Municipalities | 342 | 100% | 82% | 100% | 7% | 27% |
06 · Look up
Look up an organisation
Type a name or a domain. You get what DNS said, and what we concluded from it.
07 · The long tail
What else the records give away
Services ask their customers to prove a domain by publishing a record in it, and the records stay. These are the ones seen most, from marketing mail to video calls.
08 · Method
How this was measured
What we ask
For each organisation's mail domain: MX, NS (walking up to the zone that has them), TXT and SPF with its includes, _dmarc, and the names Microsoft and Google tenants publish — autodiscover, selector1._domainkey, enterpriseregistration, lyncdiscover, google._domainkey. For the website: A and AAAA and the CNAME chain behind them.
Every address met is looked up in Team Cymru's IP-to-ASN service, over DNS too. All 27217 questions went to public resolvers run in Europe: DNS4EU, the EU's own, and Quad9, a Swiss non-profit.
How we decide
Email is whoever the lowest-preference MX host belongs to, a filtering gateway included: it reads every message first. Office suite is a Microsoft 365, Google Workspace or other tenant proven by at least one of its records. DNS is the company most of the zone's name servers belong to. Website is the first CDN or host in the CNAME chain we recognise, else the network of the address.
640 rules name the companies. Anything unnamed falls back to the network's own registration, so every answer has an owner and a country.
Why the owner, not the data centre
The US CLOUD Act (2018) lets American authorities compel a US provider to hand over data in its possession, custody or control — including data stored in Frankfurt or Amsterdam, and including its foreign subsidiaries. So a provider counts as American if it is headquartered in the US or owned from there, and Big Tech means Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Meta.
What DNS cannot see
DNS shows the front door. A mail gateway can sit in front of mailboxes elsewhere; a CDN can front a server at home; a tenant can exist and hold little. We report what the records prove and name the record, per organisation, under Look up. Absence of a record is not proof of absence of a service.
Who is included
The constituents of eighteen European stock indices; the EU's institutions and agencies and the heads of government and central banks of its 27 members; and every Dutch ministry, agency, province, water board and municipality in organisaties.overheid.nl. A company in two indices counts once.
Corrections
If a verdict is wrong, the record that caused it is on the organisation's card. Tell us at hello@dopecode.com and it will be fixed in the rules, not by hand.