The Belgian government’s decision to use only open formats for exchanging documents is pure common sense. The whole reason for having standards bodies and the standards they produce is to guarantee compatibility and stability above individual companies’ commercial concerns.
Millions of Euros of taxpayers’ money is spent funding bodies like ISO, so it would be foolish to then ignore the work they do.
I must have missed that, but now the rest of the EU? (dutch article)
Update: “Keep Open Source in Europe” opinion article.
Update 2: Groningen (one of 12 province capital cities of the Netherlands) turned to Open Source.
