They've already invested in Matrix. Why not use that?

The software part of this would be easy. People will literally write it for free, out of the sheer joy of building Free & open source software. The part the state needs to do is bootstrap a network effect that leads to people actually using it.

I guess they’ll need to employ a few engineers to add enough lines of code to rocket.chat to make it competitive with Teams levels of slowness.

Europe must have their own tools created from scratch. Replacing how, with which infrastructure? If you use existing libraries, don´t expect full ownership nor full privacy, same applies to hardware and cables. It is though a big step finally. It is a start, Viva la France :)

Don't believe this has anything other than to do with the USA's recent attacks on NATO countries.

It's baffling that the E.U. and others (corporations anywhere really) keep using and paying for Zoom when Jitsi and Nextcloud Talk are free and work very well. This is not a political issue, but one of data sovereignty.

Instead of these politics driven projects that usually fail at least partially what tends to succeed is if an angry nerd starts a project to replace something with free alternative, such as Linux, VLC, ffmpeg, ...

The actual website listing all the tools of this office suite (in French)

https://lasuite.numerique.gouv.fr/#products

This is the kind of thing France often wants to do yet never implements.

It will mean little if the infrastructure is still dependent on volatile partners (and I'm bundling allies and adversaries in this).

The core problem is Europe has been very successful betting and building upon though choices made by others (eg. Cheap manufacture in China, cheap energy in Russia, cheap defense/capital from US, cheap manpower/migrants from developing countries...).

Europe from its high ground flaunts this model to the whole world ("look at our development metrics! Our social spending") while completely ignoring the sustainability and the costs bore by others and neglecting its own responsibilities.

And now everything is crashing down simultaneously.