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That's a big one and the Netherlands, Portugal, Norway and the UK apparently already do. In no time it will be mandatory in all EU countries.
The Netherlands seems to have it mandatory since 2009, but I've never seen it used. My wife works for the municipality, and she has never heard of it either.
Hmm, that's bad. I wonder for whom it is mandatory then.
I understood this as meaning that the file format must be supported by all government institutions. And it probably is supported. Up to a point. Because Microslop has a very bad-quality odf support in Word. Meaning: The support exists. It might not be able to read or save simple odf files that could be opened with anything else than Word, but the support exists all the same. Law fulfilled, all is good!
It's probably hardly enforced or even brought to the attention of people.
My kids' public school is full microslop - outlook branded emails, meetings via teams, .docx files, SharePoint document sharing 🤮
I love the initiative, but in reality we're very far away.
Now they just have to stick to it. The European Commission agreed to using ODF nearly a decade ago if memory serves and it has been very bad at it. Given that ODF is also maintained by Microslop in OASIS, I think they will continue to sabotage it so that they will generate incompatible versions with their shitty 360 crap.
They messed up on this only days ago! Has been fixed though:
https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2026/03/05/cra-guidances/
ODF and PDF/UA are explicitly named as the two mandated document formats, to the exclusion of proprietary alternatives.
Mandatory is nice, but nowhere could I find the information:
For whom, and for what, and when?
You probably missed the fax with the details
An absolute tangent, but why are certain worlds in German "glued togetht"?
"Bundesministerium für Digitales und Staatsmodernisierung"
Isn't this for "digital and state modernization"? Like, modernization applies to both, right? Why is one merged together but not the other?
No, modernization only applies to Staatsmodernisierung. Otherwise you'd say something like Digital- und Staatsmodernisierung. But that would make little sense as Digitalmodernisierung would mean that we already have all the necessary digital processes but they are old and need an overhaul.
A rough translation of Digitales on the other hand would be "things that are digital", which implies that it also includes improving digital processes.
Makes sense, got it. So if it applied to both words, the way you'd signal that is by hyphenating the previous word?
Seems so strange to just have a hyphen lying there in the middle of a phrase, but that's just my lack of familiarity.
Yes exactly! Like for example Hoch- und Tiefbau. You could still write it out: Hochbau und Tiefbau. But to me that just sounds redundant.