The European Commission has opened a feedback round for a new open-source strategy. Until February 3, stakeholders can have their say on the future of ‘sustainable open digital ecosystems’ in Europe. More than just a new round of plans, this process is intended to lead to a truly independent, open-source design of the European digital infrastructure.
There was already talk of an ‘open-source strategy’ between 2020 and 2023, but this remained limited to ‘principles’ and an aspiration for a ‘work culture’ that supports open source. This was vague enough to be declared a success (according to the European Commission, 70-90 percent of global software code is open source), but that strategy has not noticeably reduced the influence of American tech companies.
The new approach focuses on critical sectors such as cloud, AI, cybersecurity, and hardware. The Commission wants to find out where the growth of European open-source projects is being hampered. Much of this is already known: the investment climate in Europe is more limited than elsewhere, and the commercialization of software often takes place elsewhere. More painful is the fact that closed-source American software creates a lock-in but also relies in part on open-source components. The Commission is tackling a significant problem and therefore needs help in devising the next steps.
The feedback period runs from January 6 to February 3, 2026. Stakeholders can share their views on five questions through an official consultation. These questions concern the strengths and weaknesses of the European open-source sector, the added value for public and private organizations, and concrete measures at the EU level. In our opinion, this shows how immature the plans are, but there has to be a start to action at some point; perhaps that is now the case.
Reducing dependency
The EU has previously invested in open source through the Next Generation Internet initiative, the FIWARE framework, and GenAI4EU. If you are wondering how successful they are: the EU is seeing results based on the investments, but it is clear that they have not reached a large audience yet. RISC-V hardware and an open-source foundation for “Software-Defined” cars under the Chips Joint Undertaking also received support. However, none of this has led to a real decline in the influence of American tech players. In fact, automotive and IoT are domains that GPU giant Nvidia hopes to dominate as a kind of Android equivalent. We are not there yet, but the risk of American dependence continues to spread.
At the administrative level, the Commission speaks of success stories, albeit once again to a limited extent. In various EU regions and member states, open source is gaining support within the government. For example, states and provinces in Denmark, Germany, and France are switching to LibreOffice or Linux from Microsoft Office/Google Workspace or Windows, respectively. However, there is no broader trend that involves not only policymakers but also citizens in the transition. Migrating to European alternatives requires support, but awareness of the risks of digital dependence is at best in its infancy among the European population.
Conclusion: a cautious first step
As mentioned, the consultation is a cautious first step. Ultimately, the strategy must propose actions for the full open-source lifecycle: from development to maintenance, sustainability, and market integration. But more concretely, real software solutions must emerge that are ideally open-source and European in nature. We do not yet see a clear call to support, for example, the European SUSE instead of Red Hat for business Linux distributions, or to switch en masse to Proton’s productivity suite instead of Google’s or Microsoft’s offerings. Similarly, in AI, there could be a call to adopt alternatives such as Mistral instead of Claude, Gemini, or ChatGPT.
The ambition is not about specific options that are currently on the table. That may be the case in the long run, but in its quest for digital independence, the European Commission will want to avoid giving existing European powerhouses a competitive advantage. After all, monitoring competition is one of the Commission’s priorities in the modern era. The urge to maintain this is logical, but it still makes the next steps difficult to propose. Which allies will the EU take with it in its Big Tech stop? That should be defined at a later stage, otherwise it will remain the same ideas that made the 2020-2023 strategy a shapeless whole.