Europe is building its own digital infrastructure
On 23 April 2026, our Managing Consultant Damir Filipovic presented at the Open Community Experience in Brussels, alongside Antonio Kung, as part of the CEI-Sphere initiative.
The session brought together industry experts, EU stakeholders and large-scale pilot project leads to address a direct question: how does Europe build a sovereign digital stack it can trust?
Europe’s digital infrastructure has a dependency problem, most of the software running Europe’s critical systems, from cloud platforms to AI tools, is built and controlled outside Europe. That creates two concrete risks:
- Cybersecurity exposure, as sophisticated attacks target infrastructure Europe does not fully control.
- Supply chain fragility, as dependencies on non-European proprietary software leave organisations vulnerable to disruptions and decisions made elsewhere.
Open source is the proposed answer, as a practical strategy to build infrastructure that is transparent, auditable and governed by European rules.
The CEI-Sphere initiative is organising the effort
CEI-Sphere focuses on consolidating the Cloud-Edge-IoT continuum in Europe across four areas:
- Building cooperation between Large-Scale Pilot projects across Europe.
- Developing a data-driven understanding of the European CEI market.
- Supporting a privacy-preserving open edge ecosystem.
- Creating a technology backbone that connects cloud, edge, IoT, AI and 5G/6G.
BluSpecs co-leads one of the Spheres, covering 11 primary use cases and 5 secondary use cases alongside VDI.
Governance is the hardest part
Open-source frameworks only work if governance keeps them secure, innovative and aligned with European values as they scale. Three CEI-Sphere Task Forces are addressing this:
- Task Force 1: Open-source architecture and standardisation.
- Task Force 2: Market uptake and industry engagement.
- Task Force 3: Stakeholder forum and outreach.
The 2030 goal
Success in 2030 means Europe’s critical digital infrastructure runs on secure, open-source platforms. That goal requires decisions being made now, in governance rooms, standards bodies and procurement offices across the continent.