Europe’s dependence on non-European digital infrastructures and technologies has fired up the debate on digital sovereignty. From cloud services and semiconductors to social media platforms and payment systems people are asking how Europe can strengthen its tech independence and resilience while remaining open and innovative.
The ongoing debate highlights that sovereignty is not only about infrastructure but also about protecting our democratic values and fundamental rights. Thus the trust in existing digital ecosystem is crucial. It is now clear for everyone that technological design choices can shape European economic autonomy and democratic resilience.
This session will explore whether digital sovereignty in Europe is desirable and feasible. We want to discuss what strategies Europe should pursue to balance autonomy with openness and security in the digital ag
This session will bring in a critical discussion on the do’s and don’ts of using technical measures to mitigate online scams and how to address online harms without breaking the Internet. It will bring together technical operators, policymakers and Internet governance experts to examine:
- The real-world impact of DNS and IP blocking on Internet integrity
- The security implications of interfering with DNS, including DNSSEC deployment
- The effectiveness and limits of existing anti-spoofing and authentication technologies
- Approaches that target harms at their source rather than distorting core infrastructure
Digital technologies are reshaping European societies, creating opportunities to advance gender equality by expanding access, participation, and empowerment for women, girls and diverse groups. At the same time, online and technology-facilitated violence is a growing cross-border threat to democracy, human rights, and gender equality, as digital tools can amplify and reinforce structural inequalities, including online and offline violence, discrimination, and exclusion.
This session examines how effective measures and regulatory frameworks – such as the Council of Europe’s standards such as its recently adopted Recommendation on accountability for technology-facilitated violence against women and girls, and its monitoring mechanism GREVIO as well as the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) – combined with best practices and multistakeholder cooperation, can address online violence, prevent AI-driven discrimination, and harness digital technologies to protect fundamental rights and advance gender equality in the digital public sphere.
Building on the European normative framework, governments are rapidly integrating AI into public services. However, it is critical to ensure these systems are transparent, explainable, and accountable as the reliance on automated decision-making (ADM) and artificial intelligence (AI) systems poses risks to public trust, transparency, and accountability if not in line with legal standards. Although AI can enhance citizen engagement, research has also demonstrated that algorithmic bias reflects and even exacerbates existing social inequalities, thereby undermining principles of good administration, respect for the rule of law, and fundamental rights.
The session will explore whether these challenges can be addressed, in particular by utilising different tools and by bias testing via the AI Regulatory Sandboxes to ensure ‘human-rights-by-design’ from the earliest stages of development, or if it requires a more fundamental shift toward human-centric governance, fostering active participation through ‘anticipatory governance’ and ‘civic AI’.
Starting from a review of Internet standards, this session examines how open standards can help deliver the Internet we want: resilient, secure, interoperable and inclusive, especially in a time of rapid technological and political change.
As debates on the future of Internet governance continue beyond WSIS+20, one question is becoming increasingly urgent: how do we preserve an open, secure and interoperable Internet while integrating new and more complex technologies?
The Internet’s success has long depended on open standards developed in multistakeholder processes and adopted across networks on a voluntary basis. This model enabled innovation, resilience and global interoperability. But today, the deployment of more complex, automation-dependent and sometimes non-backwards-compatible technologies is putting that model under pressure. At the same time, policymakers are taking a growing interest in standards-setting, while technologies such as AI, quantum computing and other frontier innovations are reshaping the technical and political environment in which the Internet evolves.
Several countries, European and beyond, are discussing the introduction of social media age restrictions, amounting to bans for children. Australia banned social media for under-16s last year, France has adopted a similar law, and Spain and Denmark are considering the same. The possibility of introducing social media age bans to harmonize the ban at the EU level is being discussed by the European Commission, while MEPs approved an opinion addressing how social media and the online environment affect young people, in support of an age limit.
But do these measures serve the purpose of protecting children from illegal and harmful content? Are total bans the only viable path forward? How can the age of children and young people be verified precisely and in a way that preserves their privacy? What is the reaction of youth towards these measures, and how involved are they in the debate? Are young people’s voices meaningfully consulted in serious and sustained ways and translated into active policy shaping? What does the Australian example tell us? Can children circumvent such a measure? France is going after VPNs to prevent circumvention. What is next?
Digital platforms wield unprecedented power in shaping public debate. The way they are designed and operated significantly affects the digital public sphere.
The EU Digital Services Act (DSA) recognises platforms’ systemic risks to democratic processes, civic discourse, and fundamental rights. More recently the Council of Europe Recommendation on online safety and the empowerment of users and content creators lays a common ground for human-rights based platform accountability frameworks, featuring prominently promotion and protection of user agency.
Yet engagement-driven architectures, further amplified by generative AI and synthetic media, continue to fuel disinformation, hate speech and crime, and other online harms, eroding the conditions for civic agency and reducing users to consumers of algorithmically curated content. Moreover, algorithms and AI are reshaping human cognition and autonomy. These challenges are addresses in foundational texts like the Rome Declaration on Media Ecology and Technology Diplomacy, the Cannes Declaration on the Sovereignty of Mind, and the Declaration Universelle des Droits de l’Esprit Humain.
Against this backdrop, this session brings together civil society, academia, public authorities, and platform actors, to explore what conditions are needed for users to participate in the digital public sphere as citizens rather than as audiences. The discussion will address the legal, governance, and practical dimensions of safeguarding democratic debate in platform-mediated environments, against the background of European regulatory frameworks
This session is related to Main Topic 1 and provides the opportunity to discuss how European national and regional IGF’s could contribute to the WSIS+20 review outcomes. By connecting policy ambitions with operational realities, the session aims to foster dialogue on how WSIS+20 can remain a living framework – one that empowers communities, strengthens regional cooperation, and ensures that digital transformation benefits all. This session will bring together European Stakeholders to:
- Share national and regional experiences in implementing WSIS commitments
- Highlight innovative governance models and cooperation mechanisms
- Identify gaps between global vision and local execution
- Explore how multistakeholder participation can be strengthened in practice in the European Region
- Discuss how WSIS+20 outcomes can reinforce sustainable development, digital inclusion and human rights
- Contribute with input from Europe to the global discussion on the WSIS Review Outcomes
This session will explore the latest developments in quantum cryptography and how it relates to the internet more broadly. We will examine the technological state of play as well as existing initiatives in the policy field.
