The open-source initiative promises seamless document compatibility, transparent governance, and reduced dependency on non-European platforms.
Today, a coalition of European enterprises and community organisations has launched Euro-Office, a solution for editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations, developed as a true sovereign community collaboration of over a dozen different organisations. A tech preview is available immediately.
The effort, backed by major European tech firms including IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian and BTactic is planning a first stable release by summer.
Need for a sovereign office
Across Europe, public administrations, enterprises and educational institutions are reassessing their dependence on non-European productivity platforms. While office software remains mission-critical infrastructure, there is currently no solution that combines full Microsoft format compatibility, a familiar user experience and genuine digital sovereignty under European stewardship.
The announcement comes at a time when many organisations are reassessing their reliance on existing office solutions, not only from a cost or functionality perspective, but increasingly from a control and long-term risk standpoint. Just this week, it became public that ONLYOFFICE has shut down its cloud offering, forcing many organisations to reassess their current setup.
“With the geo-political developments we have seen in the last year, there is a clear need for a reliable, fully Microsoft-compatible and easy-to-use sovereign office solution in Europe,” states Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS.
“Our joint initiative delivers a suite with an extremely familiar interface and capable of working with documents, presentations and spreadsheets.“
Existing alternatives often require trade-offs between compatibility and usability, are encumbered by legal risks around licensing and trademarks, or are developed without transparent, open governance, lacking an independent, sustainable contributor community. For organisations handling sensitive information and public data, this creates structural risk.
Euro-Office addresses this gap directly. It is designed to provide seamless handling of widely used document, spreadsheet and presentation formats, while offering an interface that minimises retraining and migration friction.
The entire code base is released under fully open source licensing, free from trademark constraints, and developed in a transparent process open to public scrutiny and contribution. The result is an office suite built not only for functionality, but for strategic resilience.
“Europe has had the technical building blocks for years. What was missing until now was an initiative to bring them together into a meaningful, comprehensive solution,” says Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud.
“With Euro-Office, we’re not starting from scratch; instead, we’re taking responsibility for a vital piece of digital infrastructure. This finally gives organisations tools they can trust: transparent, durable, and managed in Europe.”
A public tech preview of Euro-Office is available immediately on GitHub.The preview enables organisations and individuals to evaluate core functionality, test compatibility, and contribute feedback ahead of the first stable release planned for summer.
Lead image: Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS, Henri Schmidt, member of German Parliament, Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud.