The EU's €2T budget overlooks a key tech pillar: open-source (thenextweb.com)

The European Commission unveiled a historic €2 trillion, seven‑year budget to boost autonomy, competitiveness and resilience — but the plan notably lacks targeted funding for open‑source software. That omission matters for AI/ML because open source underpins almost every layer of modern machine learning: frameworks (PyTorch, TensorFlow), libraries, runtimes, toolchains, datasets, model checkpoints and research code. These components are maintained by communities and small organizations whose long‑term sustainability — including security patches, reproducibility and interoperability — is not guaranteed by market forces alone. The budget refers to cyber‑ and AI‑legislation (Cyber Resilience Act, AI Act, proposed Cloud and AI Development Act) yet fails to match regulatory emphasis with dedicated investment to sustain the code those laws depend on. Technically and strategically, the gap risks deeper dependency on non‑European providers, weaker incident response for critical vulnerabilities, and slowed innovation in open research and deployment. Experts and think tanks (e.g., OpenForum Europe) argue for an “EU Sovereign Tech Fund” — modeled on Germany’s initiative — to provide maintenance, scaling and long‑term stewardship of essential open‑source infrastructure. The European Competitiveness Fund should explicitly earmark open source as a digitalisation priority to secure supply chains, preserve auditability and keep Europe competitive in a multipolar tech landscape. This piece, authored by cURL co‑founder Daniel Stenberg, frames the omission as a reversible but urgent policy blind spot.