LibreOffice calls out EU officials for using Microsoft Excel, ignoring ODF

The Document Foundation (TDF), in a continuation of its near-religious crusade against Microsoft and its OOXML format, has turned its attention to the European Commission (EC), accusing the body of "structural bias" in how it collects public feedback for the new Cyber Resilience Act (CRA).

The CRA (officially known as Regulation (EU) 2024/2847) is a massive piece of legislation that mandates strict cybersecurity standards for nearly every digital product sold in the EU(everything from routers and IoT devices to OSes, word processors, and mobile apps). A core goal of the act is to push companies to adopt open standards, reduce vendor lock-in, and eliminate what the law calls "unaccountable technology dependencies."

TDF thinks it is quite contradictory that the very commission drafting these rules has completely failed to follow its own advice. The EC has spent years promoting open source and digital sovereignty while forcing citizens who want to provide feedback on its policies into a corner where they must use Microsoft Excel (.xlsx). In TDF's words:

On March 3rd, 2026, the European Commission published a request for feedback on to the guidances to be provided in relation to the CRA, which must be provided through the linked spreadsheet in .xlsx format, a proprietary format that makes interoperability extremely difficult due to its ever changing and undocumented features.

In a letter to the commission, which TDF wants Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) foundations and advocates to sign in support, the foundation argued that people who use LibreOffice might face compatibility issues with the provided .xlsx template. TDF's letter states:

We ask the European Commission to lead by example by following its own guidances in relation to interoperability and at to least provide, alongside the proprietary format generated by the proprietary software and services they use, also an Open Document Format (ODF) file which is an actual interoperable and internationally recognised standard.

The foundation urged the EC to provide an Open Document Format (.ods) file, noting that:

Feedback templates of this kind should be provided in at minimum two formats: one open format (ODF spreadsheet, .ods, being the obvious choice, as it is a true ISO-standardised format with no proprietary ownership) and one widely-used proprietary format for those whose environments require it. Ideally, a plain-text or web-based form would supplement both, removing the spreadsheet dependency entirely for respondents who prefer it.

The European Commission is the third major target TDF has called out this year. Before this, the foundation had gone for the throat of OnlyOffice, accusing it of being "fake open source" for heavily marketing compatibility and defaulting to Microsoft's popular Office formats (.xlsx, .docx, and .pptx), instead of ODF.

And if you're one of those people who think that Office is superior to LibreOffice because of its ribbon interface, the TDF thinks you're wrong and that you only tolerate that layout due to a psychological normalization effect forced by Microsoft.