Last week, the European Commission published the draft guidelines for the CRA and opened a comment session open to all stakeholders until the end of March.
In its first version, the consultation page allowed users to download the draft guidelines and related communication in PDF format, and the feedback template in proprietary XLSX format only.
For this reason, we protested through a post and an open letter to the European Commission, asking that the feedback template also be provided in the open and standard ODS format.
Within 24 hours, officials from DG CONNECT—responsible for the CRA—responded positively to our request and added the template in ODS format.
This is an important first step towards the interoperability that proprietary formats do not allow, and indeed seek to limit by making the DOCX, XLSX, and PPTX formats increasingly different from a standard with the addition of unnecessary complexities.
To all those individuals who insist on considering OOXML a standard because it has been approved by ISO, and to all software that supports OOXML by using it as the default format, we remind you that you are going against not only your own interests but also the interests of all citizens of the world, and first and foremost European citizens.
We would like to express our sincere thanks to the officials of the European Commission’s DG CONNECT, in the hope that this is only the first step towards a future of interoperability and European digital sovereignty, not against technologies developed in other countries but in favor of freedom and awareness of digital technologies, for the benefit above all of future generations and their digital freedoms.
In conclusion, we invite everyone to use the ODS template for their feedback, demonstrating how important the open and standard ODF format is, and how widely it is used by those who truly care about European digital sovereignty.