Last month, I reported that a coalition of European enterprises and community organizations, including IONOS, Nextcloud, Eurostack, XWiki, OpenProject, Soverin, Abilian, and BTactic, was getting ready to launch Euro-Office on June 9, 2025. It's a Europe-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) designed to give Microsoft Office and Google Docs a run for their money.
Euro-Office has been heavily promoted as a sovereign alternative for public authorities, education systems, and some enterprises, moving away from overreliance on US-based cloud productivity services.
However, The Document Foundation behind LibreOffice recently published an open letter, sharing its thoughts about Euro-Office just a day before its official launch. The foundation says Euro-Office has been misrepresented as the first European open-source office suite.
The company indicated that LibreOffice and StarOffice were the only genuine open-source office suites while seemingly throwing a jab at Euro-Office. "They are not a freeware clone of MS Office whose code provenance is undisclosed, nor a product that has rebranded itself out of pure opportunism to ride today’s wave of Digital Sovereignty," The Document Foundation added.
In recent days, you will have read various articles announcing the arrival of Euro-Office, which is being “marketed” as the first open-source office suite developed in Europe. We feel compelled — reluctantly, since open source should rest on transparency, not deception — to correct this claim. The first open-source office suite developed in Europe was OpenOffice.org in 2001, based on StarOffice’s source code, followed by LibreOffice from 2010.
The Document Foundation
It also pointed out that Euro-Office defaults to Microsoft's OOXML document format, which it claims is designed to prevent Digital Sovereignty by maintaining content lock-in. Based on this premise, the company says that it's difficult for Euro-Office to claim to advocate open source.
Euro-Office admitted that its service will feature a user interface nearly identical to Microsoft Office, with the key distinction being that it falls under European governance rather than U.S. oversight. The move may be aimed at enticing users away from Microsoft’s ecosystem.
This makes it a de facto ally of Microsoft in its content lock-in strategy, with control remaining firmly in Redmond and far from Europe.
The Document Foundation
The Document Foundation says that Euro-Office doesn't bolster sovereignty and control but builds and strengthens "Microsoft's strategy against European Digital Sovereignty, or, if you prefer, against the freedom of European users to control and manage their own content." So far, Euro-Office's launch has ultimately raised more questions than answers.
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