The European Commission can read "documents sent to its services in a wide range of formats including international standards such as PDF, ODF..." replies Mr Morán García, Director General of the Informatics Directorate General of the Commission, DIGIT. Mr. Morán's answers the request for adherence to Open Standards in EU bodies and EC programmes that a group of people have sent under the initiative of the Free Knowledge Institute.

Last Friday, 24th of April, the foundations for vendor independent ICT education in the Netherlands were laid down. Initiated by the Free Knowledge Institute, Ecabo and Vocational Education centre ROC Mondriaan, more than 20 representatives from some of the key institutes for VET and Higher education (MBO and HBO in Dutch), from government and several companies specialised in GNU/Linux certification and training participated in this first meeting.

The Telecoms Package is a set of European Directives regulating electronic communication networks which will deeply affect laws on telecommunications, the Internet and future networks of the Member States of the European Union for many years to come (1).

A group of universities, civil organisations and individuals across Europe have sent an appeal to the European Commission expressing their concerns on the lock-in effects of proprietary file formats for digital documents. Despite all the European interoperability regulations, directives and recommendations, most agencies and funding programmes keep using closed formats to communicate with applicants and beneficiaries, and require that these formats be used for reporting.