alt Hacker News50K EUR is OK to start. There's no point in trying to outspend the top private firms.
Like many other people said there are already thousands of unpaid volunteers doing quality work.
If the EU wants "domestic" stuff they need to mandate/incentivize it. It's not like if shit hits the fan the local employees cannot run the local stuff of non-EU companies. (Therefore the important thing is to have full control locally, no outside-EU kill switches allowed - eg. what Uber had and used.)
50k EUR is a salary that only someone coming fresh out of the University will accept and only someone who has no other choice, e.g. someone not quite competitive on the market. If you want to make a difference then this is not the pool of people you're looking for.