Digital Commons EDIC launches first operational activities at Paris kick-off

Paris, 19 June 2026 – The Digital Commons EDIC (European Digital Infrastructure Consortium) today held the official kick-off of its first implementation activities, bringing together representatives from Member States, the European Commission, open source communities, and industry partners in Paris.

The event marks the Digital Commons EDIC’s transition from setup to operational delivery, following the European Commission’s recent Tech Sovereignty package and EU Open Source Strategy, which identify open source and digital commons as central to Europe’s technological sovereignty and name the Digital Commons EDIC as a practical cooperation vehicle for Member States.

“This is a strategic moment: the shift from policy to concrete action. The EDIC’s operating model is all about connect, deploy, maintain,” says Laurent Rojey, Director of the Digital Commons EDIC. “We cannot do this alone. With 100 participants from governments, NGOs, industry, and academia, I am proud that we took the first steps towards a broad and diverse European community on digital commons.”

Throughout the day, participants moved from keynotes and panel discussions into three working sessions, structured around the EDIC’s operating model:

Connect brought together Member States, communities, integrators, and users to identify what is needed to collaborate effectively across borders.

Deploy focused on turning useful digital commons into shared European capabilities that can be adopted in practice.

Maintain addressed how to sustain critical open source infrastructure so that it remains trustworthy, secure, and usable over time.

Each session identified a concrete problem to address in the coming months, a route for collaboration among participants, the contributions different organisations can bring, and where the Digital Commons EDIC’s coordination is needed to remove blockers.

• Whilst sharing ideas on community building and stewardship, participants explored how community building could also be shaped through innovative procurement procedures, such as a hackathon organised by a public administration. These experiences will be used in the set-up of a training for procurement officers in European administrations.

• Administrations have started using open source instant messaging solutions based on the Matrix protocol. However, it still remains difficult for civil servants to connect to one another across borders. The 100-day challenges will help build communication between organisations throughout Europe.

• The Sovereign Tech Agency, with its operational and strategic expertise, extensive international network, and immediate implementation capacity, is uniquely positioned to lend its expertise to the pilot of the European Sovereign Tech Fund. The pilot extends this model, adding European coordination and scale.

These outputs will inform the Digital Commons EDIC’s roadmap for 2026 and 2027, as the consortium tests and refines operational models including the 100-day challenges and the pilot for a European Sovereign Tech Fund, with a view toward scaling successful approaches from 2028 onward.

The kick-off brought together representatives from the French Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs (DINUM), Germany’s Sovereign Tech Agency and ZenDiS, and the Dutch Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations, alongside Member State observers and partners from across the open source and digital commons ecosystem.

About the Digital Commons EDIC

The Digital Commons EDIC was established by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg to strengthen cooperation around digital commons: shared digital resources such as open source software, open standards, and foundational digital infrastructure that are critical to Europe’s competitiveness, innovation capacity, and technological resilience.