You're missing the point. The reason Europe should use FOSS software is that it cannot, inherently, be beholden to any company or country. It can't be bought,

You're missing the point. The reason Europe should use FOSS software is that it cannot, inherently, be beholden to any company or country. It can't be bought, or subverted without that subversion showing up in publicly-viewable code repositories. These are attributes that inherently go with the fact that it is built in the open, with anyone able to take the source and make their own version of it even if the people who originally built it want to start doing nefarious things. And there's nothing about this that makes software hard to use; that's a consequence of the volunteer, distributed nature of most independent open-source software, combined with the lack of strong incentives to create good UX. So if Europe wants to get serious about this, it can, and should, make some that's high quality and still open. There are a number of ways it could do that, and the amount of money it should cost to make it happen should be pocket change by the standards of the entire EU working together. There are plenty of good programmers and UX engineers in Europe.