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The European Union Public Licence (EUPL)

EUPL

Open source licence

When is this solution for you? 

You want to publish your software, data, documents, specifications or source codes under an open source licence that has a clear legal standing in European law.

What can we offer you? 

The European Union Public Licence is a unique and open source licence created by the European Commission that is available in 23 official EU languages and can be used by anyone.

The purpose of EUPL is to encourage public administrations, starting with the EU institutions themselves, to embrace the free and open source model. It is legally consistent with the copyright law of all EU Member States, and supports other popular open source licences. It is especially well-suited for public administrations and interoperability tools shared on Joinup.

In May 2017, the European Commission published a new version of the EUPL v.1.2. This version provides a wider compatibility with other open source licences compared to the previous version from 2009.

Our solution at a glance 

Have a look at the EUPL leaflet.

Read the EUPL presentation.

Get started 

Read the text of the EUPL in your language.

Is this solution open source? 
Not applicable
Any questions? 

Contact the Interoperability unit of DG Informatics (please use the subject line 'EUPL').

More detailed information 

Join the EUPL community on Joinup.

Read more about the activities under the Sharing and Reuse action.

Who is already using this solution? 

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Martin Serrano Orozco
“The major advantage of using the EUPL in the Fiesta-IoT project was its compatibility with other licenses that were used in the project, such as General Public License (GPL). The use of the EUPL thus helped the team to achieve the objective of having a fully open source-based project. Considering that in the Fiesta-IoT project, various components were released under GPL or Library General Public License (LGPL), the use of the EUPL allowed not only the inclusion of these components but also the release of new components under the EUPL, making the software fully compatible. I would highly recommend the use of the EUPL in other research projects as it creates a community with a strong philosophy of sharing and compatibility.” (Full testimonial)


Martin SERRANO OROZCO, Senior Research Fellow / Internet of Things & Stream, Processing Research Unit Head, National University of Ireland – Insight Centre for Data Analytics


The EUPL was certified by the Open Source Initiative, and there are currently tens of thousands of projects licensed under the EUPL. It is widely used by public administrations in Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Bulgaria, and other EU countries. Here are some examples of solutions under the EUPL:

  • Oskari, the service platform for embedded maps and geoportals of the National Land Survey of Finland. Oskari is used for international projects, including Arctic SDI, involving Canada, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, USA, and Denmark.
  • Sentilo is an Internet of Things cross-platform designed to fit in the Smart City architecture of any city which looks for openness and easy interoperability; currently deployed at city level in Barcelona.
  • SDMX Reference Infrastructure, a generalised service infrastructure from Eurostat for statistical data and metadata exchange.
  • AT4AM, a web-based amendment authoring tool used at the European Parliament
  • Tarîqa, an intelligence platform used by the European Commission which provides real-time support for early warning and crisis response.
  • Client @firma, the eSignature public service client of the Technology Transfer Centre of Spain.
  • Expediente electrónico, Technology Transfer Centre of Spain.
  • Infraestructura y Sistemas de Documentación Electrónica (INSIDE), Technology Transfer Centre of Spain.
  • ARCHIVE, Technology Transfer Centre of Spain.
  • Re3gistry, a tool to manage and share reference codes.

The EUPL is also use by organisations such as the European Commission, European Parliament, National Land Survey of Finland and Spain's Technology Transfer Centre (CTT).

Read more about the use of the EUPL.

Key facts and figures 

The EUPL is available in 23 EU languages.