November 13, 2025
Dear President Macron,Dear Chancellor Merz,Dear President von der Leyen,
Europe is at a crossroads. The Summit on European Digital Sovereignty marks an important milestone for the EU and its member states in aligning on a shared strategy for achieving real and lasting European digital sovereignty. As the EU pursues the goal of digital sovereignty, we urge you to harness open source — that is, technology that is free to use, inspect, adapt, and share — as a key enabler of this strategy.
Europe cannot buy sovereignty off a shelf, it has to build it. In an age of geopolitical volatility and rapid innovation Europe must play to its strengths, including world-leading researchers and a rich history of open source development. It faces a choice: use these strengths to carve out its distinct place in the global AI ecosystem or settle for copying the playbooks of already dominant actors.
At their heart, closed systems create dependency, open systems create capacity.
