APELL is a federation of national open source business associations in Europe, founded in 2020, in order to increase opportunities for the members of the Association’s member organisations (i.e. European business), and to increase value and advancement for the ultimate customers in both the public and the private sectors.

APELL acts as a network for the exchange of best practices between its national member associations, as a think tank on national and European public policies concerning Free Software, and as an interlocutor for the European institutions concerned by these policies.

For APELL, European digital sovereignty, claimed by the highest leaders of the Union, requires the development of the European F/OSS industry and the ecosystems that surround it. Public procurement rules, support for collaborative R&D, but also the creation and respect of rules (interoperability, respect of human rights...) allowing European companies to remain or become competitive, are part of the instruments that Europe must put in place for this.

Since the publication of the European open source strategy in 2019, and in particular the creation of an European OSPO, APELL and its national member associations have been working to ensure that F/OSS and open standards remain at the heart of the main European initiatives on these subjects (e.g. Digital Markets Act, Data Act, OSPOs everywhere, Bothorel Report in France, GAIA-X, etc.).

APELL and its member associations also intend to play an active role in promoting European F/OSS companies, as well as F/OSS projects and products of European origin.

This presentation will be an opportunity to take stock of:

• The European political and economic context around F/OSS, both at the EU and Member State level
• APELL's values, objectives and current actions in relation to this context.