He dared to judge Netanyahu: the United States erased him from the digital world

Nicolas Guillou is a French judge at the International Criminal Court (ICC). In November 2024, he approved an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Washington's response was immediate and radical. Placed on the same list as Al-Qaeda terrorists and drug cartels, he was deprived overnight of any means of payment, of his online accounts, of his emails, and even of the ability to book a hotel room in his own country.

Here is the story of a man whose case reveals a truth few Europeans grasp: our digital sovereignty does not exist.

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Prologue: the morning the digital world stopped

Imagine. You are at home in The Hague, Netherlands. You take out your bank card to pay for groceries. Declined. You try another card. Declined. You try to book a hotel for a business trip to France. Twelve hours later, you receive an email. Your booking has been cancelled. You want to order a book on Amazon. Impossible. Your account has been closed. You look to rent a holiday flat on Airbnb. Closed as well. You try to pay a friend via PayPal. Account deactivated. You want to watch a film on Netflix. No longer accessible. Your health insurer no longer reimburses you. UPS cannot deliver a parcel in your name.

This is not a dystopian film script. It is the daily life of Nicolas Guillou, French judge at the International Criminal Court, since 20 August 2025. ¹

"I kind of feel like I'm living in the 1990s," he told Les Échos. ² "When you are placed under sanctions, there is a shock effect. You feel alone and completely helpless," he added in Le Figaro. ³

No official notification warned him. He discovered the sanctions himself, one refusal at a time, trying to pay, to book, to access his accounts. And the consequences keep appearing month after month. "Every month, I discover new things that don't work because we have no alternative," he says. ⁴

What is happening to him is not a technical bug. It is a political decision made in Washington. And the consequences, far beyond his personal case, raise a fundamental question for every European, every business, every state.

Who really owns our digital lives?

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I. Nicolas Guillou: an exceptional magistrate

A man of law

Nicolas Guillou was born on 13 August 1975 in Vannes, Brittany, to a lawyer mother and an engineer father. ⁵ After a master's in international criminal law at Université Paris-I Panthéon-Sorbonne, he entered the École nationale de la magistrature (ENM), where he would later teach. ⁶

His career is that of a man who devoted his life to international law. It took him from ministerial offices in Paris to the most sensitive international jurisdictions, via a diplomatic posting in Washington.

From 2006 to 2009, he was a judge at the French Ministry of Justice. From 2009 to 2012, he became adviser to the Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs, working under François Molins, then chief of staff to the Keeper of the Seals, on some of the most sensitive cases of the time. "Nicolas Guillou is someone who knew how to work with serenity, with a strong backbone," recalls François Molins. ⁷

Liaison judge in Washington

From 2012 to 2015, Guillou held a strategic post. He was liaison judge to the United States. Based in Washington, he served as official intermediary between the French and American justice systems. This post gave him intimate knowledge of the American judicial system. He wrote a dissertation on the Guantanamo prison. The American authorities gave him access to that ultra-secret military enclave. ⁷

This experience is crucial. Guillou knows the United States from the inside. He knows how its administration, its justice, its sanctions system work. He is not a naïf or an anti-American ideologue.

From 2015 to 2019, he was chief of staff to the President of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, created to try those responsible for the assassination of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. Since 2019, he has been an international judge at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, which try serious crimes committed during the Kosovo conflict. ¹

Election to the ICC

In 2023, he was elected judge at the International Criminal Court. He was sworn in in March 2024 and settled in The Hague. ⁸

He is a man colleagues describe as "a very intelligent and deeply open mind, capable of immediately entering into dialogue with different legal cultures," "measured, attentive, never ideological." ⁷ A great lover of classical music and of kayaking in the Gulf of Morbihan, he returns to Brittany several times a year. ⁷

The arrest warrant against Netanyahu

On 21 November 2024, Pre-Trial Chamber I of the ICC issued arrest warrants against Benjamin Netanyahu, Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav Gallant, his Defence Minister, for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in the Gaza Strip. ⁹ Nicolas Guillou was one of three judges who approved the decision. He was merely applying the law.

"This is not a political stance. It is a judicial decision, based on evidence and on international humanitarian law. ICC judges do not choose their cases. They apply the Rome Statute," he recalls. ¹⁰

Nicolas Guillou's crime, in Washington's eyes, was to do his job.

In August 2025, his name was entered on the SDN (Specially Designated Nationals) list of the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), a list of about 15,000 sanctioned individuals and entities. ¹¹¹² The list includes members of Al-Qaeda, South American drug cartels, and Vladimir Putin. ¹³

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II. The mechanism of erasure: how OFAC locks a life

OFAC, a total economic weapon

American sanctions are enforced by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), an agency of the US Department of the Treasury. Designed to fight terrorism and drug trafficking, this administrative machine has become a formidable weapon of political pressure.

OFAC maintains a list of sanctioned persons and entities: the SDN list. Being on it automatically triggers a set of devastating measures. ¹⁴

When a person is placed under sanctions, the consequences are threefold:

1. Ban from US territory for the person concerned, their spouse and children.
2. Freezing of assets in the United States.
3. Prohibition on providing services, which is the most devastating component.

Extraterritoriality, the key to American power

The third point deserves attention. It prohibits any American natural or legal person, including their subsidiaries abroad, from providing services to a sanctioned person, whether for payment or free of charge. ¹²

In concrete terms:

• Visa and Mastercard are American companies. Their networks must refuse any transaction involving Nicolas Guillou.
• Amazon, Airbnb, PayPal, Netflix, Expedia, Booking are American companies. They must close his accounts.
• Any European bank that uses the US dollar or has a subsidiary in the United States is required to comply with these sanctions, under threat of prosecution and colossal fines.
• Relatives of American nationality (spouse, children) expose themselves to criminal prosecution of up to 20 years in prison if they provide any service to the sanctioned person. ¹²¹⁵

Over-compliance: when European companies sanction themselves

Perhaps most worrying is the phenomenon of over-compliance. European companies not legally required to respect American sanctions apply them voluntarily, out of caution or fear of retaliation.

This is the case for the health insurer AXA and MSH International, French companies that stopped reimbursing Guillou. ⁴ It is also the case for eurozone banks closing the accounts of other ICC magistrates. ¹⁶ As Guillou sums up: "We are broadly moving into a system that resembles an authoritarian regime." ⁴

Over-compliance is perhaps the most pernicious aspect of the system. American companies are constrained by law. European companies choose to comply out of fear. It is voluntary submission.

As Nicolas Guillou himself puts it: "In practice, the American executive can exclude any European citizen from the banking system and digital space of their own country." ¹⁵

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III. Daily life destroyed: 27 access points cut

Payments and banking

The consequences for Nicolas Guillou are total and affect every area of life. Here is the exhaustive inventory, domain by domain, of what he lost:

Banking and payments:

• His Visa card was withdrawn by his French bank. ³
• His Mastercard is unusable. ¹⁴
• PayPal: account closed. ¹²
• His bank account is restricted. Impossible to carry out transactions outside the eurozone, blacklisted "over a large part of the planet." ¹⁶
• No electronic means of payment available, even though the bank account remains open. ¹⁴
• A purchase of concert tickets at the Olympia was blocked because an American intermediary (StubHub or Ticketmaster) was involved. ⁴

Personal digital services:

• Gmail: account closed. ⁴
• Personal Microsoft account: closed (Outlook, OneDrive). All his documents, files and family photos became inaccessible. ⁴²¹⁴
• Apple account: closed. ⁴
• Amazon: account closed. ¹²
• Airbnb: account closed. ¹²
• Booking: account closed. ¹⁷¹⁴
• Expedia: he booked a hotel room in France; the reservation was cancelled twelve hours later. ¹⁴
• Netflix: inaccessible. ⁴³

Insurance and health:

• His health insurer AXA / MSH International (a French company) stopped reimbursing him, through over-compliance with American sanctions. ⁴

Logistics and transport:

• UPS cannot deliver a parcel in his name. ³
• Impossible to board a plane without enhanced checks or being denied boarding if the airline is American or uses American booking systems. ¹⁴

Daily and family life:

• His relatives of American nationality are under criminal threat. ¹²¹⁵
• His children are deprived of the possibility of studying or working in the United States. ¹⁴
• He can no longer lead training courses in the United States, notably at the International Law Institute in Washington where he regularly spoke. ⁷

Consequences that accumulate in silence

No one notified Guillou that the sanctions had taken effect. He discovered them himself, one refusal at a time. ¹⁸ And the consequences keep appearing month after month. "My personal life has become a laboratory of the loss of digital sovereignty," he says. ⁴

No legal remedy exists in Europe to challenge these decisions. OFAC sanctions fall under no European jurisdiction. American companies or their subsidiaries do not have to justify themselves before a French court. ¹⁶

No legal remedy

Nicolas Guillou turned to the French courts. He filed an urgent application (référé-liberté) before the Paris Administrative Court, invoking a serious infringement of his fundamental rights. Result: the court declared itself not competent to hear acts of a foreign state. ¹⁹

It is a moment of legal truth. A French citizen, living in Europe, working for an international organisation based in Europe, cannot obtain justice before a European court when a foreign state deprives him of his digital and banking means of existence. European legal sovereignty stops where the dollar begins.

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IV. The ICC itself under American tutelage

Guillou's case is only the tip of the iceberg. The ICC itself, as an institution, was deeply dependent on Microsoft services.

Prosecutor Khan deprived of email

In February 2025, before the sanctions targeting Guillou, Prosecutor Karim Khan lost access to his Microsoft email. ²⁰ His Outlook account was suspended after Trump signed a sanctions decree against the ICC. ²¹ Microsoft first denied having "cut services," before acknowledging the "disconnection of the sanctioned user from Microsoft services." ²² Khan had to migrate to Proton Mail, an encrypted Swiss provider, to regain email access. ²⁰

Criminal evidence stored at Microsoft

But the most serious issue lies elsewhere. The ICC had entrusted all its digital evidence to the Microsoft Azure cloud, under the "Harmony" project, a $1.2 million per year contract. ²³ As an ICC official confided to The Guardian: "We essentially store all our evidence in the cloud." If Azure were cut off, investigations would be paralysed. ²⁴

Imagine the consequences. Investigations into war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide. Victim testimonies. Forensic evidence. DNA analyses. Telephone records. Satellite images. All stored on the servers of an American company, potentially accessible to American authorities, and vulnerable to a simple OFAC decision.

The ICC's dependence on Microsoft was not a technical detail. It was an existential security flaw.

openDesk: migration to sovereignty

The threat was so real that in October 2025, the ICC announced the replacement of Microsoft 365 with openDesk, a German open-source suite. Developed by ZenDiS (Centre for Digital Sovereignty), openDesk brings together Collabora Online, Open-Xchange and Nextcloud. ²⁵ The migration covers 1,800 workstations. ²⁶

The message is clear: an international court based in Europe cannot depend on American infrastructure to conduct its investigations.

But this migration came late. Six senior ICC officials had already left the institution for fear of sanctions. ²⁰

The 2020 precedent

This is not the first time the United States has sanctioned the ICC. In June 2020, under Donald Trump's first term, Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and a senior official had already been placed under sanctions for opening an investigation into alleged war crimes by American soldiers in Afghanistan. ²⁷ Those sanctions were lifted in April 2021 by the Biden administration. ²⁸

The fundamental difference between 2020 and 2025 is the state of digital dependence. In 2020, the ICC had not yet entrusted all its evidence to the Microsoft cloud. In 2025, it had become a prisoner of its own provider. Vulnerability only grew.

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V. A well-honed weapon: the history of extraterritorial sanctions

Guillou's case is not an accident. It fits into a long series of precedents showing that American economic sanctions have become a systematic weapon of economic and political warfare.

The hunt for French banks

Between 2014 and 2020, French and European banks paid more than $20 billion in fines to American authorities for sanctions violations. ²⁹ The method is always the same.

BNP Paribas (2014): The French bank pleaded guilty and paid $8.9 billion for processing dollar transactions with Sudanese, Cuban and Iranian entities. ³⁰ The bank was forced to temporarily suspend certain dollar financing activities. Several executives had to leave the company.

Crédit Agricole (2015): $787 million fine for similar violations. ³¹

Société Générale (2018): $1.4 billion fine. ³²

These fines had an immediate deterrent effect on the entire European banking sector. Banks put in place extremely strict compliance systems, often stricter than the law requires. It is institutionalised over-compliance. The message was clear: touching the dollar means playing with fire.

The SWIFT system, weapon of war

In 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, the United States and the European Union excluded several Russian banks from the SWIFT system. More than $300 billion in Russian central bank reserves were frozen. ³³ This was not an ordinary sanction. It was the demonstration that the global financial system is a weapon.

SWIFT is a Belgian cooperative, theoretically neutral. But the dominance of the dollar in international trade makes its neutrality illusory. Europeans followed the American decision, revealing a total absence of strategic autonomy in the financial domain. What was done to Russia can be done to any country. ³⁴

The Helms-Burton Act and the Cuba embargo

The Helms-Burton Act (1996) is another example of American extraterritoriality. It allows American citizens to sue foreign companies that "traffic" in property confiscated in Cuba. In 2019, the Trump administration activated Title III of the law, exposing European companies (hotels, airlines) to lawsuits in the United States. ³⁵

The Iran embargo

American sanctions against Iran forced dozens of European companies to leave the Iranian market, even when the European Union encouraged them to stay. Total, Airbus, Peugeot, Renault, Siemens: all had to withdraw, sacrificing markets to preserve access to the American financial system. ³⁶

The list of precedents is long

What is happening to Guillou today has happened to banks, companies, entire countries. The mechanism is always the same. The weapon is always the same: access to the dollar and the American financial system.

But there is a crucial difference. Previous cases targeted collective entities (banks, states). Guillou is an individual. And the punishment is not a fine. It is total exclusion from the digital world.

Unprecedented at this scale against a private individual.

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VI. European dependence in figures

Under American hegemony

Guillou's situation is not an isolated case. It is the symptom of a systemic dependence of the whole of Europe. The figures speak for themselves.

Payments

69% of card transactions in the eurozone go through Visa or Mastercard. ³⁷ These two companies, governed by American law, can be forced to block transactions on a simple OFAC decision.

Thirteen eurozone countries (including the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain and Austria) depend entirely on international systems for card payments. They have no national fallback system. ³⁸

France is a relative exception with the CB (Carte Bancaire) system. But even CB is backed by Visa for international transactions. And many French banks issue co-branded Visa or Mastercard cards, which are therefore American products.

Apple Pay and Google Pay, the two most used mobile payment solutions, are also American. ³⁷

Cloud

The global cloud market is dominated by three American players:

• Amazon Web Services (AWS): about 34% of the global market.
• Microsoft Azure: about 23%.
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): about 11%. ⁵⁰

The leading European player is Germany's SAP, far behind. France's OVHcloud, the leading French cloud player, accounts for about 0.66% of the global market. ³⁹

A 2024 French Senate report confirms that 60% of French companies' data is hosted by non-European players. ⁴⁰

Operating systems and digital identity

Mobile operating systems are an American duopoly: Android (Google) and iOS (Apple). Together they control more than 99% of the global smartphone market. ⁵¹

Digital identity is also under American control. Google Sign-In, Facebook Connect, Apple ID, Microsoft Account: these are the modern "digital passports." Without them, access to hundreds of services is impossible.

Email

Gmail, Outlook and Yahoo control more than 80% of the global webmail market. No European provider (Infomaniak, Proton Mail, OVHcloud) exceeds 2% market share. ⁵²

No European equivalent

The conclusion is stark. Europe has no equivalent:

• No cloud hyperscaler: no European AWS, Azure or GCP.
• No card network capable of competing with Visa and Mastercard globally. Wero is under construction.
• No mobile OS: Android and iOS reign supreme.
• No alternative app store capable of rivalling the Play Store and App Store.
• No dominant email provider in Europe.

Dependence as a weapon

Europe's dependence is so deep, so structural, that it constitutes a permanent weapon of coercion in the hands of the United States. In August 2025, a simple OFAC press release sufficed to erase a French citizen from digital life. No law, no treaty, no European institution could protect him.

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VII. The chilling effect: self-censorship as a weapon of silence

The risk to democracy

Beyond daily inconvenience, Nicolas Guillou points to a deeper, perhaps most dangerous risk: that of self-censorship.

The mechanism is simple. The sanction does not need to be applied to be effective. It just needs to be possible.

If tomorrow a European elected official, a magistrate, an investigative journalist, a whistleblower knows that a decision they are about to make could get them struck from the global banking and digital system, what decision will they make?

"There is a risk of self-censorship among representatives of political or judicial authorities," the judge analyses. "Elected officials or magistrates could refrain from making certain decisions for fear of reprisals." ¹⁴

Thierry Breton, second target

Guillou's case is not isolated. In December 2025, Thierry Breton, former European Commissioner for the Internal Market and Digital, was also hit by a visa restriction (entry ban) by Washington. ⁴¹ Former French Economy Minister and former CEO of Atos, Breton had steered the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), two European regulations that strictly govern American tech giants.

While the nature of the sanction differs from Guillou's (visa restriction vs OFAC sanctions), the logic is the same: anyone who, from Europe, makes a decision contrary to American interests can be silenced digitally and financially.

Deterrent effect on international justice

The consequences are already measurable. Six senior ICC officials left the institution for fear of sanctions. ²⁰ If judges tasked with trying the most serious crimes on the planet can be thus intimidated, what remains of international justice?

The self-censorship mechanism is particularly vicious because it is invisible. We cannot measure the decisions not taken, the investigations not opened, the arrest warrants not issued for fear of reprisals.

A precedent for the whole world

The American strategy of extraterritorial sanctions turns every European into a potential hostage of American foreign policy. The message sent by Guillou's case goes far beyond the ICC. It is addressed to all those who might one day make a decision Washington disapproves of.

It is a major shift. Sanctions, originally designed to fight terrorism and dictatorships, are becoming an instrument of political pressure against magistrates, elected officials and civil servants of allied countries.

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VIII. The regulatory illusion: what Europe failed to do

The GDPR: a lightning rod that does not stop the storm

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in force since 2018, is often presented as the great success of European digital sovereignty. It gives European citizens rights over their personal data: right of access, rectification, erasure, portability. It imposes strict obligations on companies. It threatens fines of up to 4% of global turnover.

It is a real advance. No one disputes it. But Nicolas Guillou's case brutally reveals its limits.

The GDPR protects your data. It does not protect your access to the services that host it.

When Amazon closes Nicolas Guillou's account, the GDPR has nothing to say. American law (OFAC sanctions) overrides European regulation, and Amazon does not need to "illegally process" his data. It can perfectly well keep it, export it, or delete it in accordance with its account closure policy.

When Visa blocks his transactions, the GDPR does not intervene. The problem is not data protection. It is continuity of service, a domain the GDPR does not address.

The right to data portability (Article 20)? Nicolas Guillou could technically request the export of his Gmail emails. But to where? To which European service? And what is the point of exporting data if no service will accept him as a customer?

The Blocking Statute: a law that serves no purpose

The European Union has a "Blocking Statute" (Regulation 2271/96), precisely designed to protect European citizens and companies against the extraterritoriality of American sanctions. ⁴² Adopted in 1996 to counter the Helms-Burton Act, it prohibits European companies from complying with certain American laws and allows them to claim damages.

This regulation was not activated in Nicolas Guillou's case.

It has never been activated, in any case.

MEP Chloé Ridel (Place Publique / S&D) denounces: "Ursula von der Leyen, the Commission President, is blocking. This reveals an incredible weakness of the European Union vis-à-vis the United States. We are letting a court based in Europe be undermined." ⁷

The regulatory gap

The European digital strategy rests on three pillars:

1. Data protection (GDPR).
2. Platform regulation (DSA / DMA).
3. Digital security (NIS2, Cyber Resilience Act).

None of these texts addresses the question of dependence on critical American infrastructure. A European can have every right in the world over their data. If the American provider hosting it can close their account on a simple OFAC decision, those rights are worthless.

It is as if the law gave you the right to own a car, but the manufacturer could at any moment remotely disable its engine on the orders of a foreign government.

The compliance trap

Worse: the GDPR created an illusion of security that slowed investment in digital autonomy. European companies reassured themselves thinking "we are GDPR compliant, our data is protected." They continued to migrate to the American cloud, to adopt American SaaS, to depend on American payments, without asking what would happen if access to those services were cut.

The GDPR treated a symptom (abusive data collection). The real problem — dependence on infrastructure controlled by a foreign power — was not addressed.

What Europe should have done

A letter from Emmanuel Macron to Donald Trump in February 2026. That is the only political response from France to Guillou's case. ¹⁴ The judge learned of its existence without having been informed beforehand.

A letter. To a president who placed nine magistrates on a list with Al-Qaeda and drug traffickers.

It is not equal to the stakes.

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IX. What this means for you, citizen

You are as vulnerable as Nicolas Guillou

If you are reading this article, chances are you use:

• Gmail for your emails (personal and professional).
• Google Drive or iCloud for your documents and photos.
• WhatsApp or Messenger for your conversations.
• Google Maps for getting around.
• Visa or Mastercard to pay.
• An Android or Apple smartphone for all of this.

You are exactly as vulnerable as Nicolas Guillou. The only difference between you and him is that the United States does not (yet) have a reason to sanction you.

Your digital identity does not belong to you

Your Google or Apple account is today your digital passport. You use it to log in to hundreds of sites and applications. It contains your emails, your photos, your documents, your history, your subscriptions.

If that account were to be closed or suspended, what would happen?

• Loss of access to your emails.
• Loss of your family photos stored in the cloud.
• Loss of your professional and personal documents.
• Inability to log in to sites linked to that account.
• Loss of your digital purchases (apps, music, films).

Double banking jeopardy

French and European banks are increasingly demanding two-factor authentication. To validate a transaction, they send an SMS, use a banking app on a smartphone, or require validation via a card reader.

These mechanisms all rely on technologies controlled by American companies: Android and Apple mobile operating systems, Play Store and App Store app stores, telecommunications networks whose equipment is predominantly non-European.

Most banks now require a smartphone to open an account, use their service, or validate sensitive operations. Without a functioning smartphone or connection to the Apple or Google stores, you are excluded from the modern banking system.

Windows 11: your computer no longer belongs to you

Since October 2025, Microsoft has taken a new step in locking down its ecosystem. It is no longer possible to create a local account when installing Windows 11 in consumer editions. ⁴³ The "BypassNRO" command that made it possible to bypass the Microsoft account requirement has been removed. ⁴⁴

Consequence: every new Windows 11 user must create or use a Microsoft account. That is 1.4 billion people affected. ⁴⁵ This account is the key that unlocks the entire ecosystem: Windows, Office, OneDrive, Outlook, Xbox.

But the trap is more subtle still. By default, Windows 11 redirects your "Documents," "Images" and "Desktop" folders to OneDrive, Microsoft's cloud. ⁴⁶ What you think you are saving locally on your hard drive is actually synchronised, and sometimes stored exclusively, on Microsoft's servers. The "Folder Backup" feature is enabled by default on installation.

In concrete terms: if your Microsoft account is suspended, for whatever reason, including political sanctions, you do not just lose access to your Outlook email. You also lose access to your documents, your family photos, your work files, that you thought you had "on your computer."

It is the same mechanism as the Google or iCloud account, but with an extra layer of opacity: the average user has no way of knowing where their files are actually stored.

The French state itself is dependent

French public services are now almost entirely dematerialised: France Identité, impots.gouv.fr, Ameli, Mon Compte Formation, Carte Vitale numérique, Parcoursup. All require a smartphone and/or an email address. Many are hosted on American clouds (AWS, Azure, Google Cloud). ⁴⁷

In 2021, the Senate information mission on the Cloud Act already warned: data of French citizens hosted on American clouds is potentially accessible to American authorities, without France or the European Union being able to object. ⁴⁸

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X. What this means for businesses

B2B dependence

European businesses are even more dependent than private individuals. Their work tools are almost all American:

• Cloud and SaaS: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Salesforce, Slack, Microsoft 365, Notion.
• B2B payments: Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Stripe.
• Transport and logistics: UPS, FedEx.
• Ad management: Google Ads, Meta Ads.
• Professional social networks: LinkedIn (Microsoft).
• Business email: Outlook, Gmail.

The disaster scenario

Imagine your company were, voluntarily or not, placed under American sanctions. Perhaps because you work with a client or supplier who is. Perhaps because one of your executives made a decision Washington disapproves of.

• Your professional bank accounts become unusable.
• Your cloud services are suspended.
• Your professional emails are blocked.
• Your Google and Meta ad campaigns stop.
• Your SaaS tools (Salesforce, Slack, Notion) no longer respond.

Your business stops. Within hours.

This is not science fiction. It is exactly what is happening to Nicolas Guillou, but at individual scale. Transpose to an SME, a mid-cap, a large corporation. The only thing protecting European companies today is that the United States has not yet targeted them.

The risk of contamination

The sanctions mechanism is not limited to the targeted individual. It contaminates their entire ecosystem. A supplier, a customer, a partner who is under sanctions can drag their entire value chain with them.

Banks, through over-compliance, close the accounts of anyone linked closely or remotely to a sanctioned person. The risk of "contamination" is an existential threat to any European company operating in a regulated sector.

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XI. Taking back control: solutions exist

Nicolas Guillou does not merely raise the alarm. He calls for action.

In his view, the law must evolve to prevent economic actors from amplifying threats by certain countries against justice.

What states and the European Union should do

1. Activate the Blocking Statute immediately. It has existed since 1996. It has never been used. Guillou's case is the opportunity to do so.
2. Invest massively in sovereign digital infrastructure. A sovereign European cloud, a European payment network, a European digital identity system. Wero (the new European payment system backed by the ECB) is a lead, but its deployment remains limited. ³⁷⁴⁹
3. Impose resilience mechanisms on banks and critical businesses. Require them to be able to continue serving their customers even under American pressure.
4. Support the ICC diplomatically and financially. Guarantee its independence from American service providers.
5. Develop alternatives to Big Tech for essential services. openDesk (Germany), Nextcloud (Germany), Proton (Switzerland), Infomaniak (Switzerland): solutions exist. They must be supported and promoted.

What businesses can do

1. Audit their dependence on American providers (cloud, SaaS, payments).
2. Diversify their providers and integrate European or open-source solutions.
3. Plan for continuity in case of sanctions or loss of access.
4. Choose self-hosting for critical data.
5. Raise awareness among teams on digital sovereignty issues.

What you, citizen, can do

1. Diversify your services. Don't put all your digital eggs in one basket.
2. Host your critical data at home or with a trusted European host.
3. Use alternatives to Big Tech. ProtonMail for email, Nextcloud for cloud, Signal for messaging.
4. Keep physical backups of your most important documents and photos.
5. Learn about self-hosting. Your data at home, on your servers, under your control.
6. Question your bank about its dependence on American payment systems and its continuity plans.

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XII. Epilogue: the choice ahead

Nicolas Guillou continues his work at the ICC. He has not yielded.

"I will continue my work, that is the most important thing. I am a judge at an international criminal court. I took an oath and I will continue to work as I have since the beginning of my mandate." ¹⁴

But his case is a warning.

"In a world governed by force, it is the military who must resist. In a world governed by law, it is magistrates who are on the front line and that is why we are being attacked." ¹⁵

Today and tomorrow

Today, it is an ICC judge who is deprived of means of payment and digital services for having applied the law. Tomorrow, it could be a journalist, an elected official, a whistleblower, a lawyer, a doctor, a citizen.

Guillou's case is not an incident. It is a revelation. It highlights a truth Europe refused to see for decades: digital sovereignty does not exist without sovereign infrastructure.

The data, payments, identities, communications of Europeans are hosted, processed, controlled by American companies. And these companies obey American law, not European law.

The question

The question his story poses to every European is simple.

Do you accept that your digital existence, your data, your memories, your means of payment, your online identity depend on companies located 6,000 kilometres away, which can take them away on the decision of a foreign government?

If the answer is no, it is time to act.

Going further

This case shows that we need sovereign digital infrastructure and services. That we must support and encourage national and European champions: cloud (OVHcloud, Scaleway, IONOS), email (Proton, Infomaniak, Mailo), payments (Wero, CB), operating systems (/e/OS, postmarketOS), storage (Nextcloud, ownCloud). Every adoption counts.

Archibou exists to support this transition: dependency audit on American providers, deployment of self-hosted solutions (Nextcloud, Proxmox, Yunohost), training in sovereign tools. Building your digital autonomy starts with a first step.

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Sources

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Article by Archibou. July 2026.

Unless otherwise stated, quotes attributed to Nicolas Guillou are from interviews given to France 24 (10/10/2025), RTS (15/03/2026), Le Figaro (18/02/2026), Les Échos (18/02/2026), 01net (11/04/2026), ZDNet (28/10/2025) and Le Monde (19/11/2025).

This article may be freely shared and reproduced under CC-BY-4.0 with attribution.