I wanted to know whether Europe's public sector walks the walk on digital sovereignty or mostly talks. So I spent an evening in TED, the EU database where every public tender above a set value has to be published. The question I came with turned out to be the less interesting one.
On 13 October, Austria's federal procurement agency put out a tender worth up to €1.698 billion: a four-year agreement, from February 2027, that federal ministries and other public buyers can order from. What it buys, in its own words: licenses, subscriptions, maintenance and cloud products "of the manufacturer Microsoft". Even its three parts follow Microsoft's own licensing programs.
Two weeks later, Italy's central purchasing agency CONSIP published its latest Microsoft contract for the public sector: up to €712.5 million, lowest price wins. Italy has run it so often that the 2024 round was billed as the ninth edition.
Both tenders are open to any qualified bidder. Who competes?
Resellers, the companies authorized to sell Microsoft licenses. They compete on price for the same product, and sometimes barely: Italy's previous round, worth up to €780 million, drew a single bid. Microsoft doesn't have to win anything, because the product was chosen before the tender was written. Hungary's Digital Government Agency says so in the title of its own tender: "Expansion of existing Microsoft software." What you already run becomes the reason to buy more of it, and on paper it's still fair competition.
Since January 2024 I counted 1,765 tenders on TED with Microsoft in the title, against 86 that name open source, LibreOffice, Nextcloud or openDesk. It's a rough count: TED leaves out smaller purchases, open source often goes by a product's name instead, and both sides hide some buying behind generic titles. The gap is hard to miss anyway.
By the time a purchase reaches the tender portal, the decision is behind it, often by several editions. It was made when the tender documents first named a manufacturer, and again each time a contract ran out with nothing else ready.
The other side is moving. Germany published the most Microsoft tenders (401) and also the most open source ones. In September, its federal center for digital sovereignty invited companies to distribute openDesk, an open source office and collaboration suite. One product, several sellers, the same terms for all: much like the Microsoft tenders. The difference is underneath. openDesk's core code is open, so any company may run it, support it or develop it, and if the sellers don't serve you, you can take the software elsewhere. The resellers bidding in Vienna and Rome sell a license whose terms Microsoft sets, with no version to take elsewhere.
If you sign off on IT purchases, two questions before the next renewal: do the tender documents name a manufacturer? And if they do, what would need to be in place by the end of this contract for the next one to be a real choice?
