Looking for an Exit: Europe’s Way to Public Digital Infrastructures

Jan Krewer is the Senior Policy Analyst at Open Future.

The European Union is at a moment of truth. The return of Donald Trump to the White House, backed by a coalition of tech oligarchs, has made it clear that no free society or independent economy can be built on the foundations of centralized digital infrastructures controlled by foreign corporations. Threats against the enforcement of European legislation adopted by its democratically-elected representatives show that this is no longer just a debate about wealth transfers or industrial competitiveness—it’s about Europe's capacity to self-determine its future and defend democracy itself.

Calls for independent European digital infrastructures have grown louder. Some advocate for a EuroStack, a sovereign European technology stack that could free the continent from reliance on foreign platforms. But the price tag is steep: a recent report estimated that it would require a 300 billion euro fund to invest in the various interconnected layers that could “lay the groundwork for future-oriented digital self-determination.”

As an alternative, a non-aligned digital movement is taking shape. Seeking to escape the digital imperialism and geopolitical conflicts that come with dependence on US or Chinese technologies, this movement could prioritize collaboration, openness, and non-extractive governance models for technology. Often referred to as digital commons, such initiatives reject centralized corporate control in favor of shared, participatory governance of digital infrastructure.

This is not an entirely new idea. In the history of technology, digital commons can be traced back to the birth of the Internet or the launch of the first free software license at the latest. What can we learn from past policies that have supported these models? Our recent report examined the two past decades of digital commons policies in Europe and found that the continent has long been a fertile ground for such projects. From the Web to Linux, VLC, Blender, or Arduino, many key open building blocks of today’s digital world were born in Europe. Public research, government grants, and civil society engagement played an important role in their success. European policies have supported openness and collaboration through initiatives promoting open access to scientific publications, open data, and open-source software.

Yet, openness alone has not freed Europe from Big Tech’s grip. More often than not, open-source projects and publicly funded resources have reinforced the dominance of large platforms, which have the financial and logistical means to integrate open solutions into their own ecosystems—on their terms. Some initiatives, like Next Generation Internet, have nurtured promising alternatives, such as Mastodon, the decentralized social media platform. But at a systemic level, European policies have failed to help them reach the scales of their for-profit competitors.

One key lesson emerging from past policies is that the challenge is not just making all digital resources open. To address current market powers, it is about ensuring that some of the most critical components of technology are governed as public infrastructures. Some key means of communication and production—like standards and data infrastructure—must be governed collectively. Open standards like TCP/IP create great value not merely because they are openly accessible but because they are accountable and managed through participatory governance. Wikipedia thrives not because it is just an open-licensed version of Encyclopædia Britannica but because people actively debate and refine its content. This level of governance and participation is not necessary for all software, but for critical digital infrastructures, openness must be paired with collective oversight.

A second lesson is that to succeed, such public interventions can no longer focus on technical solutions alone. In order to create viable alternatives, it is the institutions, expertise, and ecosystems around them that matter. It is not the mere availability of open-source code that strengthens digital sovereignty but the capacity of local ecosystems and industries to build on it, maintain it, and develop expertise around it. In this regard, European states have lagged behind. The EU has too often funded software innovation without ensuring a clear long-term impact. Simply producing more open-source software does not equate to digital independence if there is no demand, no institutional support, and no integration into public procurement strategies. Europe must invest in software development and the people and organizations that sustain it. Any serious approach to digital commons as public infrastructure must address supply and demand—investing in open technologies while creating markets for them through public-sector adoption and procurement preference.

The report also shows that other countries, especially in Asia, recognized much earlier that openness must be embedded in industrial strategy. China’s investment in its open-source ecosystem at large, and more specifically into open AI research and open chip designs, seems to have paid off because China has retained control by strategically protecting certain technologies and companies—developing domestic alternatives to services like GitHub, for example, to keep core software development infrastructure under national oversight.

Europe remains conflicted: should it extend its support for open research and innovation to catch up, or should access to funding and public support be further restricted to benefit European actors in key areas? The upcoming negotiations about the next EU budget, the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2028 to 2035, will test whether the EU is prepared to fund and govern digital commons not only as part of innovation policies but as part of long-term public infrastructure, to escape a cycle of dependency.

The Open Future Foundation, of which the author of this article is a team member, has been awarded a grant from the European Union’s Horizon Europe program for its participation in the NGI commons project (Grant Agreement number 101135279).