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+++
title="Open letter to the European Commission"
date=2024-07-14
+++
*Deuxfleurs has benefitted multiple times from European grants via the NGI project, for the developpement of Garage and Aerogramme, two pieces of software
that we have developped for the needs of our association. Today, these grants are in peril, as the European Commission wishes to finance AI projects instead.
We relay and sign an open letter from our friends at petites singularités, that asks that the NGI project be maintained, as it provides great assistance
for the development of free software and commons on the Internet.*
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Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European
Commission's Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade
funding mechanism (see for example NLnet's calls). This year, according to the
Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice
that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.
NGI programmes have shown their strength and importance to support the European
software infrastructure, as a generic funding instrument to fund digital
commons and ensure their long-term sustainability. We find this transformation
incomprehensible, moreover when NGI has proven efficient and ecomomical to
support free software as a whole, from the smallest to the most established
initiatives. This ecosystem diversity backs the strength of European
technological innovation, and maintaining the NGI initiative to provide
structural support to software projects at the heart of worldwide innovation is
key to enforce the sovereignty of a European infrastructure.
Contrary to common perception, technical innovations often originate from
European rather than North American programming communities, and are mostly
initiated by small-scaled organizations.
Previous Cluster 4 allocated 27 millions euros to:
- "Human centric Internet aligned with values and principles commonly shared in Europe" ;
- "A flourishing internet, based on common building blocks created within NGI, that enables better control of our digital life" ;
- "A structured eco-system of talented contributors driving the creation of new internet commons and the evolution of existing internet commons".
In the name of these challenges, more than 500 projects received NGI funding in
the first 5 years, backed by 18 organisations managing these European funding
consortia.
NGI contributes to a vast ecosystem, as most of its budget is allocated to fund
third parties by the means of open calls, to structure commons that cover the
whole Internet scope - from hardware to application, operating systems, digital
identities or data traffic supervision. This third-party funding is not renewed
in the current program, leaving many projects short on resources for research
and innovation in Europe.
Moreover, NGI allows exchanges and collaborations across all the Euro zone
countries as well as "widening countries"[^1], currently both a success and and an
ongoing progress, likewise the Erasmus programme before us. NGI also
contributes to opening and supporting longer relationships than strict project
funding does. It encourages to implement projects funded as pilots, backing
collaboration, identification and reuse of common elements across projects,
interoperability in identification systems and beyond, and setting up
development models that mix diverse scales and types of European funding
schemes.
While the USA, China or Russia deploy huge public and private resources to
develop software and infrastructure that massively capture private consumer
data, the EU can't afford this renunciation.
Free and open source software, as supported by NGI since 2020, is by design the
opposite of potential vectors for foreign interference. It lets us keep our
data local and favors a community-wide economy and know-how, while allowing an
international collaboration. This is all the more essential in the current
geopolitical context: the challenge of technological sovereignty is central,
and free software allows to address it while acting for peace and sovereignty
in the digital world as a whole.
*The list of all other collectives that have also signed the letter is available
at the following address: <https://pad.public.cat/lettre-NCP-NGI>.*
---
[^1]: As defined by Horizon Europe, widening Member States are Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lituania, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Widening associated countries (under condition of an association agreement) include Albania, Armenia, Bosnia, Feroe Islands, Georgia, Kosovo, Moldavia, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tunisia, Turkey and Ukraine. Widening overseas regions are : Guadeloupe, French Guyana, Martinique, Reunion Island, Mayotte, Saint-Martin, The Azores, Madeira, the Canary Islands.
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