What is Office EU?
Office EU is a European productivity suite for files, email, calendars, documents and calls, built on Nextcloud Hub. It brings Files, Talk, Groupware and Office together in one platform.
Looking through the Office EU screenshots, they do look like Nextcloud Groupware/Files/Office with the logo changed.Mostly adding this because I wasn't sure if it was a new product or not based on a first glance over the Office EU site. Nextcloud offers recommendations for providers on their site, most of which are in the EU [0]. The Office EU website seems to be new since around January of this year [1]. More managed hosts for Nextcloud is a good thing in my book, but I'd be a bit wary to host my stuff with a brand new provider.
[0]: https://nextcloud.com/providers/
[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20260116234614/https://office.eu...
Be careful.
I'm european and can still easily confuse the "European Union" and "Europe the general area" when context is lacking, it's not a big stretch of the imagination for me that people _anywhere_ could construe this as "official" as well.
All that it looks like is backed by some emanation from the city of The Hague. No mention of the EU proper. It's european owned and backed, sure, but not EU owned and backed.
Tsh, marketing. (see Bill Hicks on marketing).
And don't get me wrong: there's nothing wrong with starting a business rebranding Nextcloud and keeping your development closed source, as long as your honest about that, which this initiative is not.
If you're looking for a Nextcloud hoster, there's a long list of partners here [2] that contractually obligated themselves to contribute back to Nextcloud for every user they onboard.
Issue is.. if you are a traditional MS Office "poweruser", the last thing you want to do is spend your days in a web browser. These apps should also be available as native apps, similar to MS Word, Excel, Pages, Keynote, etc.
e.g.:
- https://hostingdiscussion.com/news/european-cloud-workspace-...
- https://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/empresas/amp/plataforma-offi...
And it seems to be repackaged Collabora (~LibreOffice):
> What are the pricing plans?
> Office EU will offer simple plans for individuals and teams. Pricing will be competitive and designed to be easy to understand. We will publish full plan details closer to launch.
> Will there be a free plan?
> A free plan is planned after launch. It will be a good way to try Office EU before committing. Exact limits and features will be shared when it is ready.
The enormous momentum of the installed base and occupied headspace of Microsoft systems made them lazy and complacent decades ago. They have been peddling insecure unreliable software for a generation now, and believed their was no viable threat.
It took too long, but finally. Trump and his mad bad actions are good for the Europeans like a heart attack is good for your health
Regardless of the Nextcloud issue. It's probably just a web wrapper then.
Edit: I am certain this is one or two people vibe coding then will pitch to VCs when the waitlist has 1000 people.
Listing major company logos in their banner: “The organizations listed here use similar technology (Nextcloud) as part of their operations. Their inclusion is for illustrative purposes only.”
That's also why always-connected SaaS is winning - it makes more things the vendor's problem instead of the customer's problem. Provided that you maintain a good relationship with your vendor. A metal machining company doesn't want to hire an employee to manage a bespoke computer system, or even to replace computer parts or install Ethernet cabling in the building. They might do it, if it's the only good option, but they prefer it to just work without effort, even for more money.
I have a non-technical friend in finance who uses the Desktop versions of Excel for most of their work and they say it crashes nearly every day losing work.
> but for quick-and-dirty custom applications it's still the easiest platform out there.
So I'm a big LLM sceptic. Seriously, you can check. But if there is one thing that LLMs _are_ quite good at, it is the sort of quick and (very) dirty custom CRUD apps traditionally produced with Access.
From: https://amsterdam.raadsinformatie.nl/document/16563456/1/Mee... (which is not the Hague, but Amsterdam)
>1.1 Introductie >Op 28 maart 2024 heeft de gemeenteraad van Amsterdam unaniem ingestemd met het (gewijzigde) initiatiefvoorstel Amsterdam Digitaal Onafhankelijk van raadslid IJmker
English:
>On March 28, 2024, the Amsterdam City Council unanimously approved the (amended) initiative proposal Amsterdam Digital Independent by Council Member IJmker
Join waitinglist. For a web app of Google docs.
One thing that may contribute to Europe's and the world's independence from Office is the notion that it's no longer a term distinctly associated with a Microsoft product.
I don't entirely disagree though because they could have attached some distinguishing prefix or suffix. Maybe that's what the .eu is.
It even works perfectly with Consent-O-Matic extension.
https://office.eu/images/social-proof/tu-berlin.svg https://office.eu/images/social-proof/itzbund.svg
Surely you mean "Microsoft 365 Copilot"?
(I am not making this up. That is what it is called now.)
Realistically, though, I think pretty much _all_ office suites have been called [Something] Office, for about the last 30 years. The Google one ("Google Workplace", formerly "Google Apps") is the only exception I can think of, and I wouldn't necessarily take Google's lead in software branding (honestly, until I looked it up for this post, I thought it was still called Google Apps, and I use the damn thing every day).
Something like "EuropaOffice" would have followed the historical pattern so it's specifically the lack of an additional qualifier word that's perhaps questionable, not the word "Office."
But it does look like it's always called "Office.EU" in branding so maybe that's enough?
More seriously, Office is a great word for what the software package does, and it can't be trademarked. You can have Microsoft Office, Libre Office, and Europa Office.
I mostly interact with smaller contributors to their field, and they tend to be unique and bold, because that's what is needed to be competitive. When they get their uniqueness and boldness out of just being who they are, it doesn't tend to foster the type of uniqueness and boldness needed to make a good product.
It's hard to get numbers on what countries pay to Microsoft. The Dutch parliament has repeatedly asked and has not gotten numbers even though there is a whole agency since 2014 (https://www.digitaleoverheid.nl/overzicht-van-alle-onderwerp...) specifically for giving Microsoft preferential treatment in procurement.
With your average 18-24 year old swimming in Google Docs, Notion, Monday, Airtable and a dozen others..."Office" will belong to the EU in no time.
Of which, Files, Talk, Office and Groupware are all just NextCloud services where they've swapped "Nextcloud" for "EU" in the name.
>"Office.EU is a service offered and operated by EUfforic Europe BV, registered with the Dutch chamber of commerce under registration number 98746243 and having its address at Dr. Kuyperstraat 10-A at (2514 BB) The Hague, the Netherlands."
I wouldn't personally trust a company that appears to be claiming another company's services as some revolutionary new thing, when it's just reselling them. And it was registered in November 2025 with no other information available - why would anyone gamble all their company data on a company that has appeared as quickly as it might disappear? Who are the owners/founders even?
Anyway, this was a waste of time.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-offi...
"Office is now Microsoft 365, the premier productivity suite with innovative productivity apps, intelligent cloud services, and world-class security. Office.com, the Office mobile app, and the Office app for Windows are combined in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app—with a new icon, new look, and even more features."
You can count on Microsoft to mess up their marketing message in the craziest ways. Why stick with the best-known productivity software brand on the planet when you can call it "365 Copilot"?
You can't tell me there isn't a few turbo-nerds somewhere in the entire continent of europe that will find the intersection of 6-7 languages to name an EU groupware suite.
https://nextcloud.com/partners/
Personally, I would only choose companies that are listed as a partner because then I can see what level of support they buy from Nextcloud.
https://www.nbim.no/no/investeringene/investeringsoversikt/#...
- Row count ~100k - Column count ~1k - The usual vlookup, etc. formulae. - Oracle extensions that sync tables to databases in the cloud.
I mean, I think that ship has probably sailed. Borland Office showed up at about the same time as Microsoft Office, in the late 80s. Then StarOffice, Corel Office, Wordperfect Office, throughout the 90s... If Microsoft had a defensible trademark there, then this would hardly be the first target. And Microsoft barely uses the "Office" brand _itself_, these days, and hasn't for years.
(There is still a product called Microsoft Office, but the thing that most users would think of as MS Office is now, bafflingly, branded "Microsoft 365 Copilot".)
Microsoft does have a figurative trademark for "Office" with the rectangular icon: https://euipo.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/01141355... - office.eu's logo does not bear any resemblance.
The only way this would be infringing is if office.eu usage could be confused with Microsoft other's trademarks - like Microsoft Office - but I don't see that.
So no, office.eu will have a calm Monday on that front, just like hundreds of other companies offering products with "Office" in their name.
(I'm not a lawyer. Talk to a lawyer before deciding to take on a trillion dollar company).
Now, I really, very much dislike it that often discussions on sites like this one can be utterly derailed by someone bringing up an utterly unrelated overhyped topic, so feel free to dismiss this, but I could honestly see LLMs providing a potential path to smoothing out such issues. Some model have gotten rather robust when it comes to making targeted changes to pre-existing Excel files dating back to before I was using a computer, including handling very specific modifications to ancient macros across multiple sheets. Perhaps, this could be leveraged to some extent, though being honest and trying not to overhype, I suspect that similar to those planning to use agentic coding to rewrite decades old, tested, crucially important COBOL code in a more modern language, there are likely many edge cases that will be hard to properly cover and if such a solution isn't both absolutely reliable and seamless to the users, large scale adoption by such entities will likely be impossible in the short term.
Office.eu, a 100% European owned alternative to widely used productivity platforms such as Microsoft Office and Google Workspace, has officially launched today in The Hague. Built on open-source technology and running entirely on European infrastructure, Office.eu enables organisations to regain control over their data and digital operations.
"We have seen more and more how essential it is to become cloud-independent and to rely on software that is built around European values," said Maarten Roelfs, CEO of Office.eu. "For many years, Europe has relied on American software and therefore created a certain risk of dependency, but we have also given away the control over our own data. Office.eu proves that we now have a strong European alternative, with sovereignty, privacy and transparency at its core."
The platform has been tested over recent months by early adopters across Europe. Designed as a complete office suite, Office.eu combines document editing, collaboration and secure data storage, while fully complying with European Union data protection legislation.
The launch comes at a time of growing concern about digital dependency and data sovereignty. Recent geopolitical developments have underlined the strategic importance of having secure, independent digital infrastructure within Europe.
Maarten Roelfs explains the positioning of the company: "Office.eu is 100% European owned and runs entirely on European data centres. The data and the apps stay exactly where it belongs and are safe from non-European control. The Office Suite is very intuitive and easy to use enabling a seamless switch from American software to office.eu. We also help customers to migrate very conveniently from Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. It is currently rolling out across Europe by invitation for selected clients who have requested access. Pricing is comparable to existing market alternatives and tools are available to ensure smooth data migration. Potential clients are welcome to apply. A widespread, phased European rollout is planned in 2nd quarter 2026. It's now available across Europe, with pricing comparable to existing market alternatives and tools to facilitate smooth data migration."
"Security Delta (HSD) is proud that Office.eu is rooted in The Hague, the International City of Peace and Justice. In this city we work together and we are a leading hub for digital governance, cybersecurity and innovation. The city actively supports initiatives that strengthen Europe's digital sovereignty and contribute to a secure, open and resilient digital future."
— Joris den Bruinen, General Director of Security Delta (HSD)
Read the full story and listen to the interview with Maarten Roelfs on Stories of Purpose The Hague.
Office.eu is a 100% European all-in-one Office Suite collaboration platform. The software is partly built on Nextcloud, the leading European open source platform. Office.eu offers organizations a secure by design alternative to non-European office software and offers state-of-the-art email, document management and collaboration tools. The software is designed to fully comply with European laws and regulations and is therefore safe from legislative non-European control. The company was founded in 2024 and started operating early 2026. Customers are signing up from all over Europe. Growth is expected across all European countries, particularly among private individuals and small and medium-sized enterprises.
More info: office.eu
The Hague & Partners is the official marketing and acquisition organisation for the promotion of The Hague, focused on residents, visitors, conferences, businesses and institutions.
More info: thehague.com