The Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (DC EDIC) was officially launched today in The Hague, marking a major step in Europe’s push for technological sovereignty. The European Commission welcomed the initiative as having strong potential to strengthen the EU’s digital independence. The DC EDIC brings together France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Italy, with Luxembourg and Slovenia as candidate members and Poland and Belgium as observers. For the first time, it creates a common European structure dedicated to digital commons, uniting public administrations, Open Source communities, and companies to pool resources, support strategic open components, and scale digital infrastructure beyond isolated pilots.

The European Commission sees DC EDIC as a strategic tool to provide governments, businesses, and citizens with real digital choice grounded in European values. It will act as an incubator and one-stop shop, offering funding pathways, technical and legal expertise, and cross-border collaboration models to enable administrations to reuse proven Open Source building blocks.

EDICs, legal instruments under the Digital Decade Policy Programme, allow Member States to jointly develop and operate cross-border digital infrastructures with shared governance. Existing EDICs cover areas like language technologies, local digital twins, and blockchain; the DC EDIC now complements this network in the field of open digital building blocks.

The Commission encourages more Member States to join the consortium and help shape a shared European digital future based on openness, trust, and technological sovereignty.