Just to add some background that might betray some of the intent of this initiative. in the first mention of the DNS4EU in the Cybersecurity Strategy published in Dec 2020 a motivation for an EU based resolver to reduce dependencies on - note-  a handful of non-EU companies, is marked by a footnote informed by this paper . This seems like a great idea for somebody thinking about the following terms: how to reduce dependencies on non-EU operated infrastructure, how to provide an EU alternative and, add-ons, it has to comply with all the EU values and norms. Fast forward, the add ons develop by being added by extra technicalities and the CEF2 funding programme has a funding line for this.

Ideally there are stakeholders already in discussions with the EU Commissions about what an upcoming funding programme should contain in order to fit with the industry and the market needs. I would not be surprised if this call for proposals is already targeted at known stakeholders, but this could also not be the case. It is also telling that this action looks a bit divorced from the rest of the funding line, which is dedicated to the cloud federation. In the high level political discourse - it's not divorced because it's part of the same narrative of reinforcing EU resources vs non-EU, digital autonomy, sovereignty, etc. This aspect is also reflected in the call document, which foresees an assessment of suppliers to strictly exclude non-EU entities, i.e. non-EU entities are not eligible for this call.

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