The European Union does many good things that nobody notices. One of those is the “Next Generation Internet” programme (NGI). With this programme, the European Commission supports the development of free, open source software, as an alternative to commercial, surveillance-based applications. A noble endeavour – with a catch: The Commission seems to be set on quietly ending the financial support.
At least that’s what French association Framasoft is fearing. Framasoft develops PeerTube, the Fediverse alternative to YouTube, and a whole host of other Google-free software. Next Generation Internet supports some of the projects.
On Sunday, Framasoft published a blog post detailing its concerns. The trigger: A draft work programme for the Horizon Europe programme from which Next Generation Internet (NGI) draws its funding. Or at least that was the case in the past, because the draft does not allocate any funding to NGI for the coming year. We’re publishing the draft work programme.
An ecosystem in danger
“The European financing programme NGI is in danger, even though it’s probably one of the best things that happened to free software in recent years”, says the blogpost. “This initiative allowed for the financial support of hundreds of free community projects, including some fundamental building blocks for our daily digital life.”
The threat to the NGI programme endangers a whole ecosystem of free and open source software, writes Framasoft. “The diversity of this ecosystem is the great strength of European technological innovation.” Keeping up support for NGI means more support for sovereign European infrastructure, it says.
According to the blogpost, NGI so far had a budget of 27 million Euros which supported over 500 projects over the last years. Framasoft says it does not understand why NGI should be stopped: It worked efficiently and cheaply, says the association, and calls for the programme’s survival.
Commission gives non-answer
The 2025 work programme for Horizon Europe is still in a draft state, the EU Commission told netzpolitik.org. A formal adoption is loosely planned for the second quarter of 2025. The Commission did not comment on whether it planned to cut or stop funding for NGI.
Alexander Sander from the Free Software Foundation Europe calls for a long-term solution. “It’s becoming obvious: We need sustainable and secure financing for NGI in the future”, he told netzpolitik.org. “Without the necessary resources, problems such as the fight against gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act will become harder and the path towards more control over technology will become more difficult.” According to him, this is the only way to successfully push for the digitalisation of Europe.
The Digital Markets Act is an EU regulation that aims to make the digital economy more contestable by setting strict rules for the biggest players on the market.
Survival under a new name?
While the draft work programme for Horizon Europe does not contain funding for NGI, it does still have financing for open source software – but under a new name: “Open Europe Stack”. This programme is still set to support the “digital commons”.
“Open Europe Stack” is itself set to be part of another initiative, the so-called “3C network”. This idea had already been part of a white book on interconnectivity in Europe that the EU Commission presented earlier this year. This white book proposed, among other things, to deregulate European telecoms markets and reduce barriers between them. Civil society reacted unimpressed.
Less money, more bureaucracy?
NGI may become part of this idea under a new name. But there are two problems: The total budget of this programme would be far less than what NGI had to distribute – only 10 million Euros. And the maximum sum for funding projects is planned to be 400.000 Euros.
NGI was so far specialised in very small funding sums, the average funded sum of its largest project was only around 42.000 Euros. But this money was paid out purposefully and without much bureaucracy. This could now change, replaced by larger sums and more paperwork.
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