The poll comes as Europe is trying to boost homegrown technology across artificial intelligence, cloud, telecoms and beyond, and reduce its reliance on foreign tech giants, notably American and Chinese firms.
While people trust European tech companies more, only half of respondents (51 percent) said they trust homegrown tech firms with their personal data. Slightly fewer respondents (45 percent) said they trusted their national government with their information.
The European Pulse survey, conducted by Cluster17 for POLITICO and beBartlet, polled 6,698 Europeans across Spain, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Belgium from March 13 to March 21.
German respondents were the most mistrusting of U.S. and Chinese tech: 91 percent said they don’t trust American companies with their data and 98 percent distrust Chinese firms.
People in Poland were among the most trusting of non-European tech companies, with 38 percent saying they trust U.S. firms with their data and 20 percent saying they trust Chinese tech companies to handle their data responsibly.
Belgian respondents trust European firms the most: 59 percent said they believe European tech companies would be responsible when handling their data.