Our Work

European Union

Our involvement in the European Union policy goes back to 2001, when FSFE became an interested third-party in the Commission's antitrust case against Microsoft. Since then, we have kept on promoting Free Software by focusing on fundamental principles that must be respected, such as fair competition.

EU Policies overview: Free Software and Open Standards

Many countries in Europe have policies, laws or recommendations concerning Free Software and Open Standards. In collaboration with the Free Software community, we are preparing a comprehensive overview of these policies. We want to provide both activists and policy makers with a tool to compare the approaches that exist in different countries, and to learn from both good and less good practices. This is a work in progress. Please email anything you can add to <policies AT fsfeurope DOT org>, along with any comments you may have.
You can read more here.

EU Browser case

Free Software Foundation Europe supported the European Commission's antitrust investigation against Microsoft as an interested third party. The investigation began on the 16th of January when the European Commission DG Competition reported that it had issued a statement of objections regarding Microsoft's abuse of web standards and the tying of Internet Explorer (IE) to the Windows Operating System product family. It is based on a complaint submitted by Opera, a European company involved in web browser development, which FSFE publicly supported in 2007.

European Interoperability

The European Commission is investigating the way Microsoft prevents competitors from interfacing with many of its desktop productivity programs. FSFE's President Karsten Gerloff says: "We welcome the Commission's decision to keep the interoperability investigation open while it monitors whether Microsoft's promises help to promote competition."

FSFE is also pushing for Open Standards, which are key to interoperability and as such FSFE promotes their adoption, especially through the revision of the European Interoperability Framework.

Other ongoing activities

What we achieved

Documents and Publications