An expert report directed to the European Commission charts how the EU can turn digital openness into sovereignty through a strategic Open Internet Stack.
“This report is not suggesting if Europe should take an open approach, but how”. This sentence could not be clearer and is captured in the executive summary of a new report commissioned by DG CNECT, the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, in charge of Europe’s digital policies and programmes. From NGI to Open Internet Stack presents a unique combination of strategic clarity and operational feasibility. It calls for the EU to invest in its digital future by transforming open source from a hidden dependency into a structured, sovereign asset that supports competitiveness, security, and innovation.
The report highlights how today’s digital infrastructure – cloud, software, and data services – is dominated by a handful of non‑European providers, mostly based in the US. This concentration creates structural dependencies and weakens Europe’s ability to set standards, develop home-grown expertise, and ensure the security and interoperability of critical systems. At the same time, European open source talent and communities remain vibrant: from FOSDEM (one of the largest annual gatherings in the world for free and open source enthusiasts, hosted at ULB Solbosch campus in Brussels) to Odoo (a Belgian company providing an open-source ERP system, which achieved unicorn status in 2021 and is now valued over €5 billion), Europe is rich in capability and mindset. The EU also funded many projects in this field through its Next Generation Internet (NGI) Initiative, launched in 2018 and running until 2027, which granted close to €150 million to almost 2’000 cascade‑funded projects, with 83% of grant recipients being newcomers in EU funding as they have never been supported through other EU programmes before. Yet, what is missing for this ecosystem to take the next step is a political and economic framework to convert this energy into a sovereign digital ecosystem.
The author, Stuart J Mackintosh, a seasoned expert and consultant in Open Source, therefore proposes to fully realise the vision for an Open Internet Stack (OIS). OIS is a modular layer of open, interoperable digital building blocks – across connectivity, computing, and communication – that public and private actors can use to develop future-proof services. It embeds “compliance‑by‑design”, enabling Europe to implement its digital policies through open standards rather than through after‑the‑fact regulation. A 2024 report supports that the NGI Initiative “has had a significant impact on shaping a sustainable, sovereign, and EU‑aligned tech landscape”. Yet, the European Commission realised that this was not enough to create an OIS, and therefore launched several calls under the Cluster 4 2025 work programme of Horizon Europe to support this vision.
Despite new funding available to tackle this issue, Mackintosh argues that Open Source is no longer just an alternative development model, but the backbone that the EU needs for a long-term industrial strategy in the digital economy. Economic analyses cited in the report point to trillions in global value created by Open Source, yet current GDP indicators fail to capture this – due to the non-pecuniary dimension of open source systems. Meanwhile, according to a study published in April 2025, Europe spends over €260 billion each year on imported proprietary technologies from the US – costs that could instead stimulate a competitive internal market, foster SMEs, and retain value within the continent.
To unlock this potential, the report proposes a set of actionable policy concepts divided into four categories: (i) Business and commerce, (ii) Citizens and society, (iii) Community support, and (iv) Public sector and procurement. For each section, it describes the issues at stake, the concrete actions to take, and the intended outcomes to expect. For instance, it suggests (i) updating procurement rules to favour interoperability and local value creation; (ii) creating EU-recognised certification and legal forms for Open Source businesses; (iii) strengthening digital literacy; and (iv) aligning national initiatives under a shared vision of digital sovereignty. Furthermore, since the next EU’s Multiannual Financial Framework (MFF; 2028-2034) is currently being discussed, the report outlines concrete budget scenarios, ranging from maintaining current levels (thus, ensuring continuity with NGI) to fully “set the rules for the digital age” for the EU to become a global leader in public infrastructure. The latter scenario sends some high hopes: “As technology affects all sectors, the breadth of this scenario is wide, injecting principles across industries and sectors and fully embracing technology + values + market capability + awareness + education”.
These scenarios will also be helpful to the European Commission’s services, given that they are preparing a forthcoming European Open Digital Ecosystem Strategy (expected in Q1 2026). In fact, the report’s publication coincided with the launch of a call for evidence on Open Source Digital Ecosystems, whose feedback will inform the strategy. Interestingly, the call for evidence essentially asks the ecosystem to provide precisely the kind of material this report already provides: a diagnosis, strong evidence, actionable policy ideas, sound strategies, and budget scenarios. For Switzerland, this focus on open source is a welcome opportunity: no later than in September 2025, EPFL, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) released Apertus, a Swiss multilingual Large Language Model, that is fully open source, EU AI Act-compliant and a sovereign alternative to other AI models available on the market. This example illustrates how the Swiss tech ecosystem can benefit the European digital ecosystem, and vice versa, through the implementation of European transparent solutions in Switzerland.