Video conferencing became critical operational infrastructure between 2020 and 2022, and the default choices — Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, Cisco Webex — locked in significant US dependency at exactly the moment the Schrems II ruling made that dependency legally fragile.
For European organizations, particularly in the public sector, healthcare, education, and regulated finance, this combination created a procurement problem that has not fully resolved. Multiple data protection authorities have questioned whether mainstream video conferencing tools can lawfully process EU personal data when their parent companies are subject to US legal compulsion.
Open-source platforms such as Jitsi Meet and Matrix-based Element Call address this by allowing fully self-hosted deployments inside EU infrastructure, with no vendor-side data access whatsoever. European SaaS providers like Whereby and Livestorm offer managed services with EU jurisdiction and infrastructure.
End-to-end encryption is increasingly available across this category, though the operational tradeoffs around features like cloud recording and transcription change meaningfully when encryption keys are held client-side. Buyers should evaluate which features they actually need before assuming a full-feature parity replacement is possible.