Euro-Office Launches as Europe’s Bold Open-Source Rival to Microsoft

A coalition of over a dozen European tech firms just unveiled Euro-Office, an open-source office suite built to break the continent’s deep dependency on Microsoft. 1A technical preview is already available on GitHub, with the first stable release expected in summer 2025. If it delivers on its promises, this could reshape how millions of Europeans work every single day.

What Is Euro-Office and Who Is Behind It

3 IONOS and Nextcloud have launched Euro-Office, a European open-source office suite backed by a coalition of more than a dozen organisations across Europe, positioned as a sovereign alternative to Microsoft Office for editing documents, spreadsheets and presentations. 3 Euro-Office is being developed under a shared governance framework that brings together commercial open-source companies, independent developers and civil society groups, with participants including IONOS, Nextcloud, EuroStack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian, OpenXchange and bTactic.

The announcement was made at a press event in Berlin on Friday, 12jointly by IONOS and Nextcloud. 2Also present was Henri Schmidt, a member of the German Parliament, a signal that this initiative carries political weight far beyond a typical product launch.

“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.” Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS

Why Europe Needs a Sovereign Office Suite Now

The timing of this launch is no accident. 34

Digital sovereignty is a “matter of national survival,” as one European minister told CNBC, as the continent scrambles to undo the dominance of U.S. digital services in its infrastructure amid geopolitical tensions.

The numbers paint a stark picture:

• 35 Microsoft’s market share stands at 77% for EU public sector productivity software, with shares reaching up to 90 to 92% in office productivity software across specific Member States.
• 34 U.S. cloud providers dominate the European market with an 85% share, according to Synergy Research Group.
• 34 Spending on sovereign cloud infrastructure in Europe is expected to more than triple to $23 billion by 2027 compared to 2025 levels, according to Gartner.

8 The US CLOUD Act, signed into law in 2018, gives American law enforcement the authority to compel US-based technology companies to hand over data stored on their servers regardless of where in the world that data is physically located, creating an uncomfortable tension with the EU’s own data protection framework.

This is not just a business problem. It is a security risk. 33When Microsoft temporarily restricted email access for the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor, reportedly following U.S. sanctions, it sent a clear message: relying on American tech giants means your critical systems can be shut down by decisions made in Washington.

How Euro-Office Is Built and What Makes It Different

Unlike many past efforts, Euro-Office is not starting from scratch. 12The partners have forked the components of ONLYOFFICE available as open-source code and plan to build on them.

12 Nextcloud and IONOS justify the decision for the ONLYOFFICE fork with its more modern architecture and code base compared to LibreOffice and its browser variant Collabora. Nextcloud CEO Frank Karlitschek said bluntly that “LibreOffice is 35 years old and no longer the most innovative.”

But what about ONLYOFFICE’s Russian origins? 12ONLYOFFICE has roots in Russia, but the partners emphasized this does not pose a security risk for Euro-Office, as they have checked the open-source code and rebuilt components that were not available as open source.

Here is what Euro-Office brings to the table:

15

• Works with DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF, ODT, ODS, ODP, TXT and many other file formats
• Real-time collaborative editing with others
• Ability to save documents back to the app used to open them or download in various formats

15 Euro-Office provides a truly open, transparent, and sovereign solution for collaborative document editing, but it is not designed for stand-alone use. Instead, it is developed to be web-based and integrated into another product that handles documents. Think of it like an engine, not a car. It plugs into platforms like Nextcloud Hub, XWiki, OpenProject, and even Proton.

“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.” Frank Karlitschek, CEO of Nextcloud

Europe’s Growing Wave of Microsoft Alternatives

Euro-Office is not an isolated effort. A much bigger movement is sweeping across the continent.

31 In Germany, the state of Schleswig-Holstein let its Microsoft 365 licences lapse last October, and more than 40,000 civil servants are now using free and open-source replacements, with one-off transition costs of 9 million euros comparing favorably to the 15 million euros it was paying annually in licence fees. 31 German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is shifting his chancellery away from Microsoft 365 to openDesk suite, developed by the Centre for Digital Sovereignty. 31 French minister David Amiel has promised to “reclaim digital independence” with La Suite, an open-source collaboration platform being introduced across the French public service.

Meanwhile, 1Office.eu recently went live as an all-in-one work environment based on Nextcloud Hub, launched in The Hague in March 2026. 8Early access has already attracted nearly 15,000 applicants.

Initiative	Base	Target Audience	Status
Euro-Office	ONLYOFFICE fork	Enterprises, public sector, developers	Tech preview live on GitHub
Office.eu	Nextcloud Hub + Collabora	Individuals, SMEs	By-invitation rollout, Q2 2026
openDesk	ZenDiS (German state agency)	German government	Active in Schleswig-Holstein, Berlin
La Suite	Open-source stack	French public service	Rolling out across agencies

What Happens Next for Euro-Office

14 The coalition’s participants have committed significant resources to the project and aim to create a sustainable ecosystem around Euro-Office, inviting other companies, public sector bodies, and civil society organizations to join the collaboration. 12 By summer, the software is intended to replace the previous office component Collabora in Nextcloud and the IONOS Nextcloud Workspace. That is a big deal, because 3 IONOS serves around 6.6 million customers and operates in 17 markets, while Nextcloud’s software is used by tens of thousands of organisations and tens of millions of individuals.

The real test will come after the first stable release. 3Whether the tech preview shows enough compatibility with widely used Microsoft document formats to persuade organisations to evaluate it seriously remains the immediate challenge.

3 The governance structure may also prove crucial if Euro-Office is to win support from public sector buyers and regulated industries, where procurement decisions often take governance, licensing terms and long-term maintenance into account.

The launch also comes just weeks after 19ONLYOFFICE Workspace Cloud was discontinued as of March 2, 2026, leaving many organisations searching for alternatives. Euro-Office offers a timely path forward.

For decades, Europe has talked about breaking free from American tech dominance. Governments have written policy papers. Think tanks have published reports. Conferences have debated the issue year after year. But now, for the first time in a long time, real products are hitting the market with real backing. Euro-Office, Office.eu, openDesk, La Suite. These are not PowerPoint slides. They are working software with real users. Whether this coalition can truly rival Microsoft’s grip on the continent remains to be seen, but the intention is unmistakable. Europe is done waiting. Share your thoughts in the comments below.