UN’s Initiative on a Global Digital Compact receives feedback from CENTR

CENTR recommends governments avoid barriers to domain registration, respect multistakeholder governance, ensure non-conflicting data protection regulations and avoid addressing content-related issues through technical solutions.

Global Digital Conpact

The UN’s Global Digital Compact (GDC) program has received comments from CENTR, the group that represents European country code top-level domain name registries (ccTLDs), such as.de for Germany or.no for Norway.

CENTR’s recommendation calls on governments to avoid imposing unnecessary and disproportionate barriers to domain name registration while promoting evidence-based policymaking and respecting the multistakeholder governance of the DNS. To ensure non-conflicting data protection regulations, governments should recognise the cross-border nature of the technical infrastructure. Finally, stakeholders should avoid addressing content-related issues through technical solutions and interventions via the technical internet infrastructure.

In order to outline shared principles for an open, free, and secure digital future for all, the GDC is seeking input from a wide range of stakeholders during the consultation period. It is noteworthy that the technical community, including ccTLDs, accounts for a very small percentage of submissions (1% as of 25 April 2023).