Euro-Office integration can help Europeans ditch Microsoft Word and Google Docs

European companies are building a web-based productivity suite integration, which could help replace Microsoft and Google Docs with European alternatives.

The open-source project is supported by companies and initiatives like IONOS, Nextcloud, EuroStack, OpenProject, and Proton.

According to its GitHub profile, Euro-Office is an “online office component for real-time collaborative editing of Office documents.” It supports multiple formats, including DOCX, PPTX, XLSX, PDF, ODT, ODS, ODP, and TXT.

The creators emphasize that Euro-Office is an integration component rather than an independent productivity suite, as it “merely handles document editing itself.”

A platform that integrates Euro-Office, such as Proton Docs or OpenProject, must provide storage, navigation, permissions, and sharing logic.

Euro-Office allows users to edit documents, spreadsheets, and presentation files with others in real time. Moreover, users can save the document back to the application they used to open it or download it.

Euro-Office is based on the open-source suite OnlyOffice. Lyon, France’s third-largest city, adopted it in 2025 as part of its efforts to move away from Microsoft Office.

“With the geopolitical developments we have seen in the last year, there is a clear need for a reliable, fully Microsoft-compatible and easy-to-use sovereign office solution in Europe,” Achim Weiss, CEO of IONOS, is quoted by Tech.eu.

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European countries are increasingly looking for alternatives to American technologies amid rapidly deteriorating relations with the Trump administration.

Germany’s digitalization ministry recently announced that all public-sector documents will be used only in open formats. In practice, this means shifting from Microsoft Word to office suites like LibreOffice.

Germany’s northernmost state, Schleswig-Holstein, said in 2025 that 80% of state government workplaces had switched from Microsoft software to open-source alternatives.

Office.eu, marketed as a European alternative to productivity platforms such as Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, officially launched in the Netherlands in March 2025.

The office suite, which is open source and runs entirely on European infrastructure, allows document editing, collaboration, and secure data storage.

OnlyOffice says its code was used without consent

OnlyOffice issued a statement on March 30th saying that the Euro-Office initiative violates the software’s licensing terms and principles of international property law.

More specifically, it states that the software is distributed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3 (AGPL v3), which requires preserving OnlyOffice branding in derivative works and providing proper attribution to the original technology, among other requirements.

“We require full and immediate compliance with all applicable licensing conditions, including – but not limited to – the preservation of OnlyOffice branding, logo, and all required attribution elements as defined in our licensing terms,” the statement reads.

According to GitHub, the Euro-Office project forked – or duplicated – the OnlyOffice code base, because the collaboration wasn’t possible for a number of reasons, including the lack of transparency and alleged ties with Russia.

According to OnlyOffice, the company believes “that working within a proper legal and licensing framework is, in fact, the very foundation of any real collaboration.”

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