EU accelerates open source push for digital sovereignty

European governments are accelerating a digital sovereignty push focused on open source and open standards, according to Element Blog. The European Commission renewed its open source strategy this year after Ursula von der Leyen called for technological sovereignty in 2019, and governments in France, Germany, and Sweden are already adopting Matrix and Element as part of that shift.

How Europe is moving

European institutions and national administrations are combining standards work, procurement pilots, and targeted funding to reduce dependence on proprietary vendors. DG DIGIT and bodies such as CEN, CENELEC, and ETSI are creating frameworks and pilots that favour interoperable systems, while initiatives under the Next Generation Internet label have explored how open projects can meet public-sector needs. The push is partly pragmatic, reflecting the fact that EU countries account for 22% of GitHub repositories while the United States accounts for 23% and China for about 10%, a distribution that shows European developer activity is large enough to sustain an open-source ecosystem if policy incentives align.

The operational reality remains challenging. Much European open source relies on volunteers and small and medium enterprises that lack sustainable revenue for long term maintenance. Element and the Matrix.org Foundation demonstrate how an open-standards approach can deliver secure collaboration while keeping data portability intact, but scaling that model across critical services will require explicit procurement and funding changes.

Policy levers and industry impact

The core argument from proponents is straightforward, "Open source needs to be recognised for its transparency and sovereignty," as Element Blog puts it. To translate rhetoric into durable capacity, procurement rules must reward free and open source software and require open standards, while grant programmes should fund long term maintenance rather than one-off pilots. That combination reduces the risk of vendor lock-in and creates market opportunities for EU suppliers, but vendors must present sustainable business models and avoid recreating new forms of lock-in through proprietary extensions.

For EU technology companies, the policy momentum opens procurement opportunities if they provide FOSS, standards-based, and interoperable products. For public buyers, the trade-off is between the convenience and feature completeness of incumbent proprietary solutions and the transparency, portability, and local economic benefits of open-source alternatives. Developers and CIOs should assess suppliers not only on functionality but on licensing, standards compliance, and the ability to export or migrate data and services to avoid being tied to a single provider.

Why This Matters

For a software team deciding whether to keep code and workflows on GitHub or move to a European alternative such as GitLab, the policy shift changes the calculus. Procurement rules that favour open-source and standards-based solutions will make it easier for teams to choose EU vendors without sacrificing portability, because standards like Matrix and public support for open code reduce migration friction. In concrete terms, a public agency replacing a proprietary messaging stack with Element gains greater control over deployment and data, while a development organisation moving repositories to a vendor that honours open standards retains the option to switch providers later without losing critical integrations.

Expect the next phase to be administrative and financial: procurement guideline updates, targeted funding lines for maintenance, and the rollout of the Commission's open source strategy. Those moves will determine whether the current momentum translates into a sustainable, sovereign stack for European public services and enterprises.

Sources

Element Blog

Watch for procurement reforms, funding announcements, and the Commission's implementation timeline as the next milestones to track.