Europeans run their families, their jobs, and their politics through chat apps, and almost none of those are built or owned in Europe.
Chat swallowed everything
Over the past decade, the lines between email, text messages, messengers and social media have blurred. Chat carries war updates, relationship break-ups, games, Christmas greetings, and family photos. At work it is built into documents, meetings, and system alerts, and chat is how people talk to generative AI. Instagram, TikTok, and online games all have chats of their own, and a chat window has become a common way to reach customer service.
In 2025, 82 percent of people in the EU aged 16 to 74 used instant messaging, the same share that sent email, according to Eurostat. In a country at war, chat also carries the news: in a 2025 survey for the EU’s advisory mission in Ukraine, 51 percent of Ukrainians named Telegram as their main source of news.
And almost none of it is European
None of the messengers that most Europeans use are built or owned in Europe. The deep dive It’s time to pick up the smartphone named messaging as one of the open flanks of Europe’s phone, and this piece takes it up. In Spain, 95 percent of smartphone owners use WhatsApp, according to the telecom regulator CNMC (Telecompaper). In Germany, Italy, and Portugal it is around 90 percent, according to the messaging company LINK Mobility. In France, 87 percent of people who use messaging apps use WhatsApp and 76 percent use Messenger, according to the telecom regulator Arcep’s 2026 digital barometer (survey from June 2025). Market surveys find that Messenger, which Meta also owns, leads in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, and in parts of Central and Eastern Europe (Sinch). Greece and Bulgaria prefer Viber, a Japanese-owned app whose European business is run from Luxembourg. Where the legal provider is European, the owner is not. WhatsApp’s European service is provided by an Irish company, WhatsApp Ireland Limited, owned by Meta in the United States.
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