Political decisions have a large impact on Free Software, its ecosystem, and its communities. The FSFE has been taking part in consultations, public discussions and in sharing our demands with decision-makers in order to recognise the importance of Free Software in the ongoing digital transformation of Europe. With the help of the framework of our “Public Money? Public Code!” campaign, we are demanding legislation that requires that publicly financed software developed for the public sector should be made publicly available under a Free Software licence.

In this talk, we will delve into the EU Declaration of Digital Rights and Principles, the ongoing AI Act, as well as recently proposed Cyber Resilience Act, and the Product Liability Directive. We will further discuss the European Commission communication: "Open Source Strategy: Think Open”. This will help us analysing the shift of wording that has taken place on the part of the EU institutions until now but also to highlight some of the loopholes that still exist in such legal frameworks. We will finally list some of the challenges that we have to overcome to assure more public code in the public sector in Europe.

Please note that this talk was originally scheduled to be given at 10.00 but have been postponed to give room for the talk Covid Exposure Notification Out in the Open to be longer to cover for cancellations of other talks just before the schedule freeze.