Europe’s Open Source Strategy Reveals the Missing Link Between Tech Sovereignty and International Cooperation

Author: Julius MURKE

EU’s Open source Strategy (The EU Open Source Strategy | Shaping Europe’s digital future) is another example of how EU’s technology policy is changing in today’s geoeconomic context — and another case where Europe is pointing in the right direction but has not yet operationalised the transformation its own strategies imply.

The EU increasingly treats technology not simply as a market outcome, but as a strategic capability. Resilience, technological sovereignty, industrial capacity and control over critical infrastructure have moved to the centre of economic policy. Open source is part of this shift: the EU’s new Open Source Strategy is a cornerstone of its 2026 Tech Sovereignty package (Will we see new European Global Tech Giants within the next 5 years?), alongside the Chips Act 2.0 and the Cloud and AI Development Act.

For me, this makes open source another useful case study for what I have called partnership-based industrial policy: industrial and technology policy that recognises both the return of an active state and the reality that strategic capabilities cannot be built nationally or even within Europe alone (https://www.world-os.org/podcast-english/episode/fea474e4/deep-dive-into-the-concept-of-partnership-based-industrial-policy-part-2-geo-economic-alliances).

It also exposes a recurring problem. Europe’s high-level strategies increasingly speak the language of openness, partnerships, mutual interests and international technology alliances. But when these ambitions are translated into operational strategies, institutions and programmes, older patterns often reappear. The rhetoric has moved faster than the operating model.

Open source is becoming core public policy

The Open Source Strategy’s purpose goes far beyond reducing software licence costs. Open source is increasingly seen as a way to reduce technological dependencies, strengthen resilience and increase European control over critical digital infrastructure.

At the same time, it is becoming central to the modernisation of public administration. The strategy wants governments not merely to consume open-source software, but to contribute to it, improve procurement, share reusable solutions and cooperate through structures such as the Digital Commons EDIC.

Germany illustrates both the importance and novelty of this agenda. Its first dedicated Federal Ministry for Digital Transformation and Government Modernisation was established only in 2025. ZenDiS, Germany’s competence centre for digital sovereignty and open source, dates from 2022. The initiative that became the Sovereign Tech Agency also started in 2022.

Europe is building important capabilities. But Europe is also still learning how to do this.

An overlooked source of expertise

This creates a paradox. Open-source software in public administration may appear relatively new from the perspective of European industrial policy, but international cooperation has worked with many of these questions for much longer. The Principles for Digital Development, developed in 2014 and endorsed by hundreds of organisations in international cooperation, already emphasised reuse, interoperability, open standards, open-source software and participation in open communities.

More importantly, many countries outside Europe have substantial practical experience operating open-source systems in core public functions. Health is an obvious example. DHIS2, an open-source health-information platform developed through a global collaborative model, has been adopted by 43 of the 47 Member States of the WHO African Region.

This experience matters.

My own work reflects it. I have worked on building two open-source communities and on implementing several open-source tools in public administrations across different countries. Questions around governance, local ownership, interoperability, supplier ecosystems, maintenance, sustainability and avoiding dependence on individual technology providers have long been practical issues in international cooperation.

Yet this body of experience is only weakly connected to Europe’s emerging open-source and technological-sovereignty architecture.

Our strategies are ahead of our institutions

This reflects a broader pattern I increasingly observe. At the highest political level, Europe has already changed much of its language. We speak about technology alliances. We acknowledge that innovation comes from outside Europe. We speak about open strategic autonomy and economic-security partnerships. International cooperation increasingly invokes mutual interests rather than one-directional development assistance.

Conceptually, much of the transformation has already happened.

But moving from speeches and overarching strategies toward operational documents, programmes and organisational routines reveals how incomplete that transformation remains. Open source makes this especially visible.

The EU Open Source Strategy includes international cooperation, but its operational logic still focuses strongly on promoting European open-source technologies abroad through instruments such as the EU Tech Business Offer. There is nothing wrong with helping European technologies reach international markets.

But the model can easily remain: Europe develops. Partners adopt.

That is precisely where the opportunity of open source is larger than the current operating model.

From technology transfer to technology development partnerships

Open source is almost ideally suited to international co-development. Code can be developed across borders. Governments can jointly finance maintenance. Public administrations can define requirements together. Companies in different countries can compete to provide services around shared technological assets. Innovations developed outside Europe can become part of Europe’s own sovereign technology stack.

Europe should therefore not only ask: How can we bring European open-source technologies to partner countries?

It should equally ask: What should Europe develop together with partner countries — and what technology, experience and innovation should Europe import from them?

A government that has operated a national open-source health-information platform for a decade may have relevant lessons for a European administration currently establishing its first Open Source Programme Office.

The knowledge flow should therefore not be Europe → partner country.

It should be Europe ↔ partner country.

That is the essence of a technology development partnership. And it is also what partnership-based industrial policy should mean in practice.

The gap is visible in my own work

This institutional gap is not theoretical. I experience it directly. I work on open-source software and public-sector digital transformation — areas that are now explicit priorities of European technology policy. Yet if I want to connect this work to European institutions concerned with sovereign technology, digital commons or open source, I largely have to create those links myself.

The linkage is possible. But it is not yet the operating model. It still depends on individuals recognising that international-cooperation projects are relevant to European technology and industrial policy and proactively connecting institutions that remain organised as separate worlds.

A mature operating model would ask systematically: Where could European and partner-country institutions develop reusable software together? What innovations developed through international cooperation could strengthen European public administrations?

Today these links depend too much on initiative. They should become institutionalised.

Breaking down the internal–external divide

That requires overcoming another old pattern: the separation between Europe’s internal technology policies and its international cooperation architecture. Imagine that the Sovereign Tech Agency or a European equivalent identifies an open-source component that is critical to public administrations. European funding could finance its long-term maintenance. But an international-cooperation organisation such as GIZ, Expertise France or Enabel could manage partnerships around that technology together with Open Source Programme Offices, governments, universities, maintainers and technology companies in Europe and partner countries.

The same software could support public administrations in Germany, Cameroon, France or Kenya. European technology institutions would contribute financing and technical priorities. Partner countries would contribute requirements, developers and implementation experience.

The result would not be a European product exported abroad. It would be joint investment in shared technological infrastructure.

The same principle applies institutionally. European governments are currently learning how to establish Open Source Programme Offices, structure procurement, finance maintenance and govern public-sector contributions to open-source communities. Why should Europe first design these models internally and later transfer them abroad as technical assistance? European and partner-country administrations could learn how to build them together.

Open source as partnership-based industrial policy

The Open Source Strategy therefore tells us something much larger about the current transformation of European policy. Technology sovereignty, state capacity, industrial policy and public-sector digitalisation are increasingly intertwined. Governments are becoming more active participants in technological ecosystems. At the same time, international cooperation is searching for a model based less on development needs and more on mutual strategic interests. Open source is an obvious meeting point.

Europe is creating institutions such as Digital Commons EDIC, ZenDiS and the Sovereign Tech Agency to solve collective-action problems around technology. International-cooperation organisations already possess decades of experience working across governments, companies, universities, international organisations and local ecosystems. Yet these two worlds remain surprisingly separate.

Each increasingly needs what the other has. European technology policy needs expertise in institution-building, multi-country coordination, local capacity development and managing complex partnerships across very different administrative environments. International cooperation needs concrete areas where genuine mutual-interest partnerships can replace one-directional technology transfer. Open-source technology provides exactly such an area.

Bringing the two together could therefore advance both Europe’s technology-sovereignty agenda and the transformation of international cooperation.

It also points toward a broader understanding of technological sovereignty. Sovereignty does not require producing every technology within Europe. It requires the capability to understand the technologies we depend on, shape their development, maintain alternatives, switch suppliers and participate meaningfully in the ecosystems that produce them.

Open source is an obvious opportunity to turn partnership-based industrial policy from an idea into an operating model.