DG Connect’s Director for Future Networks, Thibaut Kleiner, represented the Commission during the launch event.
The DC EDIC represents a significant step in Europe’s efforts to strengthen digital sovereignty by coordinating national efforts to develop open, interoperable and reusable digital solutions that can be shared across borders – so called Digital Commons.
The DC EDIC brings together France, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, and it is now supported by a growing group of candidate Members (Luxembourg, Slovenia) and observers (Poland and Belgium). It creates for the first time a common European structure dedicated to digital commons. It brings together public administrations, Open Source communities and companies to pool resources, support strategic open components and accelerate the transition from isolated pilots to shared, scalable digital infrastructure.
The launch follows the Summit for European Digital Sovereignty held in Berlin on 18 November, where EU Member States signed the Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty and set out landmark commitments to reduce Europe’s dependence on a small number of global platforms and to invest in trusted European infrastructures. DC EDIC is one of the concrete instruments that will help deliver on this agenda by turning the political vision of digital commons into operational projects across Member States.
The Commission views the DC EDIC as a strategic instrument to reduce EU dependency on a small number of global platforms and to give governments, businesses and citizens real digital choice built on European values. It will serve as an incubator and one stop shop, providing funding pathways, technical and legal expertise and cross border collaboration models that will help administrations reuse proven Open Source building blocks.
The Commission will work closely with the consortium as it becomes a central partner in the EU Open Source agenda. Europe aims to move from scattered investments to a stable home for key digital commons, enabling administrations to cooperate more effectively and strengthening Europe’s competitiveness, resilience and openness.
An EDIC is a legal instrument under the Digital Decade Policy Programme that allows Member States to jointly develop and operate cross border digital infrastructures with shared governance and long-term stability. Several EDICs are already active in areas such as language technologies, local digital twins for cities and blockchain infrastructures and the DC EDIC now complements this growing family in the field of open digital building blocks.
The Commission encourages more Members to join the DC EDIC and help shape a shared European digital future based on openness, trust and technological sovereignty.
