Unicis Signs the SUSE Open Letter for Europe's Digital Sovereignty

We are proud to announce that Unicis has signed the SUSE Open Letter: Europe’s Digital Future, joining more than 100 European technology organisations calling on the European Commission, Members of the European Parliament, and EU governments to take a decisive step toward genuine digital sovereignty.

What the Letter Asks For

The open letter makes a focused, practical ask: embed an “Open Source First” principle into the EU Tech Sovereignty Package — specifically, require that all public sector procurement of software and digital services must assess whether a qualified open source solution exists before a proprietary alternative is considered.

This is not a call to ban proprietary software. It is a call for a level playing field — one where the sovereign alternative receives genuine, documented, auditable consideration before public money is committed to a vendor lock-in arrangement.

The letter addresses a structural problem that those of us building compliance and security tooling for European organisations see directly: the public sector is the largest single driver of proprietary software dependency in Europe. Every major procurement decision that defaults to a closed, US- or foreign-hyperscaler-hosted platform makes European institutions operationally dependent on conditions — licensing terms, pricing, geopolitical relationships — they cannot control.

Why We Signed

At Unicis, our mission is to make privacy, security, and compliance accessible to every organisation in Europe — from a five-person startup to a public institution. We are an open-core company. Our platform is built on open standards, our frameworks reference publicly auditable criteria (GDPR, ISO 27001, NIS2, DORA, MVSP), and our roadmap is shaped by the needs of the European market we serve.

We signed because we believe three things to be true:

Strategic resilience requires operational independence. The geopolitical instability of the past several years has made it impossible to ignore the risk of building critical public infrastructure on platforms that can be modified, priced, restricted, or withdrawn by decisions made outside Europe. Open source is not idealism — it is infrastructure policy.

European companies need a fair signal from public procurement. Market signals matter. When the public sector systematically defaults to large proprietary vendors, it removes the commercial oxygen that European open source companies need to grow, invest in R&D, and compete at scale. An “Open Source First” evaluation requirement changes that signal without mandating outcomes.

Transparency is non-negotiable in public infrastructure. Software that processes citizen data, manages public services, or enforces compliance obligations should be auditable. Open source is not a guarantee of security, but it is a prerequisite for the kind of independent scrutiny that public trust requires.

What We Hope Comes Next

The letter calls for this principle to be embedded in the EU Cloud and AI Development Act (CAIDA/CADA) as a binding requirement — systematic evaluation of open source alternatives, with documented, transparent justification when a proprietary solution is chosen instead.

We hope the Commission treats this not as a protectionist measure, but as exactly what it is: a governance standard for public investment. Taxpayer-funded software should, wherever possible, produce assets that are maintainable, transferable, and accountable to the public.

Unicis will continue to build tools that help European organisations meet their compliance obligations — and we will continue to advocate for the policy conditions that allow European technology companies to compete on merit.

Read the full letter and see all signatories at suse.com/eu-tech-sovereignty-letter.

If your organisation would like to sign, the letter is open for additional signatories.