Pricy black hole or efficiency miracle? The rocky road to EU interoperability

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One year after the launch of the Regulation for a Europe of interoperable services, the EU Commission presents its first progress report on its implementation, as optimistically as usual. The foundation for a seamlessly connected digital Europe has been laid, they say in Brussels. In fact, according to the report, the government institution has succeeded in building a considerable administrative infrastructure in a short time: an advisory board has been established, national authorities have been appointed, and a central portal for interoperability solutions has been launched.

However, behind the success stories of 100,000 monthly page views on this new platform and almost 13,000 registrations for the in-house Interoperable Europe Academy lies the question of how much real change has actually reached the tens of thousands of citizen service centers across the EU.

Acceleration or Deceleration?

The challenges are immense. Although two million people commute between member states daily, the digital administrations of EU countries often still do not speak the same language. The goal of the digital decade, set by the EU as part of the digital decade, to offer all important public services online 100 percent by 2030, is ambitious. The Commission sees the regulation as the decisive lever to save 5 billion euros per year through efficiency gains.

The path to this currently leads through more regulation: since January 12, 2025, interoperability assessments have been mandatory for new or significantly modified digital services. Whether this new instrument actually increases efficiency or merely slows down the legislative process as an additional "digital check" cannot be directly inferred from the report. The Commission has already completed 32 such assessments. However, the effort is considerable. To curb the bureaucratic burden, the AI tool AI4DRPM is already being developed to partially automate the creation of these compliance reports.

Progress so far primarily on paper

A look at the details shows that many of the praised advancements are currently still in the pilot phase. The "Agenda for Interoperable Europe", which is intended to set the long-term direction, is not expected to be formally adopted until 2026. The so-called living labs, where innovative GovTech solutions are to be tested with startups and small and medium-sized enterprises under controlled conditions, only received their legal basis in July.

So far, the report relies heavily on proven practical examples. These are intended to show what is technically possible. However, some of them existed long before the new regulation came into effect. For example, the Commission refers to Estonia: with its national interoperability framework and its world's first "data consulate" in Luxembourg, the Baltic state serves as a model for digital resilience.

The Brussels executive body also refers to Emrex. This is a system for secure exchange of student data. However, it has been facilitating student mobility in countries like Finland, the Netherlands, and increasingly Germany since 2015. Another "lighthouse" project for the Commission is Poland: there, an introductory course from the EU Academy has been integrated into the national platform to train over 400 officials in EU-compliant interoperability standards.

As the most populous member state, Germany is centrally represented in the "Interoperable Europe Board" – a control body for the implementation of the requirements – according to the report. The Federal Republic has actively contributed to the development of guidelines to take national specificities such as the local federalism into account. However, rolling out interoperability assessments at the state and municipal level still represents one of the major operational hurdles. Germany is also mentioned as a pioneer that is increasingly relying on open source in e-government. This is in line with the goals of the regulation to reduce dependence on IT monopolies.

Between ambition and reality

The new portal for an interoperable Europe recorded 670 active solutions by July 2025. It is striking, however, that over 58 percent of them come from the EU level itself. The main actor is the Commission's Directorate-General for Informatics. The contribution from member states and public bodies clearly lags behind at 34.5 percent. To change this, those responsible established an official procedure in May 2025 for the "Solution for Interoperable Europe" label. It is intended to make high-quality developments more visible.

The coming years will be the acid test for this flagship project. For interoperable Europe not to end up as a paper tiger, the focus must now shift away from committee work towards widespread implementation, as the Commission itself knows. It therefore intends to embed interoperability deeper into other laws such as the AI Regulation or the Data Act. However, without genuine political commitment in the capitals and massive investments in the technical infrastructure, the promised digital sovereignty will hardly be achievable.

The expansion of the Interoperability Academy, announced by the Commission, which plans to offer twelve new courses – some in all 24 official languages – by the end of 2025 is a start. Ultimately, however, it is not the certificates issued that count, but whether a move from Berlin to Brussels or Warsaw works as smoothly for citizens digitally as a click in an online shop.

(nie)