EU Open Source Strategy: key proposals for tech sovereignty.
The European Commission has published its EU Open Source Strategy (June 2026) to reduce dependence on non-EU proprietary tech and strengthen control over critical digital infrastructure. The strategy takes a full lifecycle approach — from R&D and procurement to deployment and maintenance — to build a more resilient and competitive European open source ecosystem.
Six pillars of the strategy.
Scale the Open Internet Stack
A catalogue of EU-aligned open source solutions for cloud, workplace tools, secure email, and decentralised social media.
Prioritise public funding for open source
Development funding in semiconductors, operating systems, cloud/edge, AI, cybersecurity, and future internet architectures.
Open Source Maintenance Instrument
Critical dependency mapping and a dedicated instrument to ensure long-term security and sustainability of key components.
Open source in procurement
New guidelines, fair assessment of open bids, and stronger OSPOs (Open Source Programme Offices) in public administrations.
Embed in major EU initiatives
Open source at the heart of the EUDI Wallet, European Business Wallet, and Digital Commons EDIC.
Support the ecosystem
Startups, skills development (including via Erasmus+), stewardship models, and international promotion of EU open source solutions.
Sovereignty is resilience: software you own can't be switched off, priced out, or walked away from.
Today the software that runs European business and government depends on a handful of non-European proprietary vendors. Every licence renewal, price rise or withdrawn service is a dependency Europe does not control. Open source changes the ownership model — the right to run, read, modify and self-host turns rented software back into infrastructure that European organisations own outright.
Continuity
No vendor can deprecate, discontinue or price you out of software you can self-host. The source code and your data stay with you — no end-of-life cliff, no forced migration.
Auditability
Open code can be inspected for security, bias and compliance — a precondition for trustworthy systems in the public sector under GDPR, NIS2 and the AI Act.
Independence
A European maintainer base and the freedom to fork insulate organisations from geopolitical leverage, currency swings and unilateral licensing changes.
A practical step toward reducing vendor lock-in and capturing more value in Europe.
This is not an aspirational white paper — it is a practical framework for reducing vendor lock-in across European public infrastructure. By linking procurement, R&D funding, maintenance and deployment into a single strategy, the Commission is building the conditions for a self-sustaining open source ecosystem that Europe controls.
At Predictive Labs, we have operated on this thesis from day one: commoditised capability belongs in the commons, client-specific work stays private, and every pipeline should be auditable by design. The EU Open Source Strategy validates that approach at continental scale.
Building on open source for European public services?
We build AI systems on open, auditable stacks for European public-sector programmes. If your brief aligns with this thesis, talk to us.