EuroCommons: Caisse des Dépôts, Fraunhofer and Inria join forces to strengthen European strategic digital commons
Paris / Berlin, 2 November 2026 — On the occasion of the Franco-German forum for the future and the digital summit in Berlin, and as part of the EuroCommons programme launched on 1 July 2026, Catherine Mayenobe, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Caisse des Dépôts Group, Dr. Marcel Altendeitering, for the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, and Bruno Sportisse, chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Inria, announce the signing of a memorandum of understanding aimed at structuring a research and development collaboration devoted to the development, maintenance and strengthening of digital commons of European strategic interest.
This partnership builds on EuroCommons, the initiative launched by Caisse des Dépôts on 1 July 2026 within the framework of its strategic roadmap Digital Horizon 2030. This initiative aims to bring together, in coalitions, major information technology departments, open source communities and European public institutions around critical software components, in order to migrate together towards open and sustainable digital commons.
The three parties intend to jointly advance the EuroCommons initiative and to explore the mobilisation of their research and development capabilities in order to help overcome the technological barriers that the coalitions will face. The cooperation may take different forms, such as the exchange of information in preparation for joint projects, the execution of research and development projects funded from public sources, and contract research conducted by Fraunhofer and/or Inria for Caisse des Dépôts.
Three complementary players in European digital sovereignty
This memorandum of understanding brings together Caisse des Dépôts, a long-term investor serving the general interest and the sovereign digital ecosystem; the Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft, Europe's leading organization for applied research, along with its Fraunhofer ISST institute, which develops smart data ecosystems such as data spaces for sovereign data exchange ; and Inria, the French national research institute for digital sciences and technologies, tasked with strengthening the digital sovereignty of France and Europe, notably through the coordination of the research component of the national artificial intelligence strategy since 2018.
European digital sovereignty must now rest on open source software that is collectively mastered. With Fraunhofer and Inria, Caisse des Dépôts is committing the best of European research to overcome the technical obstacles that still hold back digital commons. This is the whole ambition of the EuroCommons initiative, fully in line with our Digital Horizon 2030 roadmap for a sovereign, sustainable and high-performance digital ecosystem at the European scale
Fraunhofer stands for applied research that delivers real-world impact. With our expertise in data ecosystems and sovereign data exchange at Fraunhofer ISST, we will help turn digital commons into reliable, interoperable solutions. Together with Caisse des Dépôts and Inria, we are strengthening the Franco-German foundation for Europe's digital sovereignty."
Reducing our technological dependencies and increasing our digital resilience are major issues. I am convinced that we have to revamp our way of acting in Europe by renewing public/private partnerships, by developing open source communities with a global footprint and by aligning our strategies and roadmaps especially between France and Germany. That is why this MOU between Caisse des Dépôts, Fraunhofer and Inria is a strong signal for the European digital sovereignty in software.