Opinion: European digital sovereignty must be built on openness

We call for open source solutions to become the default choice in public procurement and research funding across the Union, as this sort of openness brings tangible benefits for the larger society. They include:

• Transparency and trust – open source software can be audited by independent experts, NGOs, or academia. This allows for verification of whether our data is secure and used in accordance with established frameworks, values, and the law.
• Interoperability and gatekeeping prevention – a single digital market can only thrive with an open exchange of data and the removal of barriers related to licensed components. Open standards also help prevent so-called ”vendor lock-in” (dependency on a single provider), supporting healthy competition.
• Supporting innovation – a resilient ecosystem of open source solutions enables smaller (but no less innovative) enterprises to enter the market. On top of that, creating a European Data Commons – a corpus of high-quality data in open access – would support development of projects like sovereign AI or more energy-efficient small language models.
• More common resources – results of publicly funded research and civic administration should software be open-source by default. The construction of the latter should serve the public interest, e.g., the science and education sector, rather than corporate profit alone.

Building the digital sovereignty of the European Union is a non-negotiable necessity, and open standards should be its foundation. Establishing the European Data Commons means creating a space where technology supports culture, education, and science – ethically, inclusively, fairly. This will yield transparency, trust, and strengthening of civic society and the economy as a whole.