Denmark ends its Collabora pilot after less than six months
The push towards digital sovereignty in Europe has met a practical obstacle in Denmark. The Danish ministry responsible for digitalisation has declared the experiment to replace Microsoft applications with an open source alternative finished, and the pilot is being treated as a failure. The trial began in 2025 and was meant to show that institutional and administrative work could be done without Microsoft Office.
What the test involved
Only 38 employees took part. They were asked to leave Word, Excel and PowerPoint and work in the Collabora suite, which is developed in the United Kingdom. The programs used were Writer, Calc and Impress, the equivalents of the three Microsoft tools. According to Italian outlet Punto Informatico, the project was reportedly shelved already in February 2026, when the government in Copenhagen called early elections.
Where the problems appeared
The difficulties reported by users were not about missing features but about everyday document work. They included handling of styles, paragraph formatting, unexpected blank pages and trouble tracking changes. These are exactly the areas where administrative staff, who exchange documents with colleagues and external parties all day, notice friction first.
The technology behind Collabora
Collabora is built on LibreOffice technology, which is managed by The Document Foundation. The foundation recently returned to the debate over the origins of the OOXML format and how Microsoft secured its standardisation ahead of the open ODF format. Collabora is not the only alternative to Office: OpenOffice, ONLYOFFICE and the Calligra suite are also available.
A wider European movement
Denmark is not alone in testing the limits of leaving Microsoft. France is also working in a similar direction, and the city of Lyon has been cited as moving from Windows to Linux. The Danish result shows that technical and political will is not enough if daily usability falls short.
What comes next
The influence of AI in software development may change how open source tools reach public administrations. In the consumer market, AI built software is already drawing attention. The most visible case is ArtCraft, a free package created entirely with artificial intelligence, with programs inspired by Adobe and Microsoft products. Whether such tools can meet the reliability demands of government offices is still an open question.
