I see your point about the disconnect between the rhetoric and what we actually see in production. Perhaps "regression" is a strong word, though, IMHO I tend to see it as a very slow and uneven evolution.

Even if the pace is frustrating, there are still pockets of genuine open-source adoption in the European public sector. For example, we're seeing projects like Germany's OpenDesk or various municipalities moving toward Nextcloud and other sovereign cloud solutions.

The EU Open Source Strategy[0] was announced just under a month ago and it specifically mentions the EU Digital Identity ecosystem, including the European Digital Identity Wallet (EUDI Wallet) mentioned in the article. I agree with OOP that the requirement of an Apple or Google phone goes against these ambitions, and I will contact my elected representatives.

[0]: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/open-sourc...

What he's correctly saying is that if even one major country adopts an EUID Wallet implementation that only allows for Google and Apple, this on its own has a magnitudes bigger impact than the pockets you're talking about. That's a regression.