Rapporteur: Mark Carvell, Internet Governance Consultant; Izaan Khan, Member of the UK Internet Governance Forum steering committee, Filip Lukáš, CENTR
- EuroDIG supports practical actions to achieve complementarity between multistakeholder processes, such as the IGF and the national and regional IGFs, and UN initiatives such as the GDC, and thereby avoid duplication in the implementation of WSIS+20 outcomes. Furthermore, building on existing mechanisms within the WSIS structure for coordination, monitoring, and reporting is recommended as more resource efficient for all stakeholders, rather than investing in new processes and parallel structures.
- Tangible steps to ensure effectiveness include: emphasising specific topics of concern to focus on (such as human rights, connectivity and the Sustainable Development Goals), cross-reporting across appropriate UN and WSIS meetings, encouraging multistakeholder policy labs and partnerships for monitoring, collaboration, and participation in multilateral fora such as the ITU Plenipotentiary, and increasing capacity-building for governmental stakeholders, in order to direct their attention to the right areas to avoid confusion.
- EuroDIG believes that operationalising implementation of WSIS+20 should be data-driven (leveraging existing databases held by institutions, universities and other organisations) and evidence-based, supported by measurable outcomes, aligned with national and regional needs, and prioritising operational capacity. A comprehensive global roadmap, building on the existing WSIS Action Lines, and mapping actions to specific entities, would serve to ensure effective vision, coordination amongst relevant entities, clarity of purpose and accountability for actions to address priorities.
- EuroDIG considers it important to resolve confusion about AI governance through promoting cooperation between Internet governance and AI processes, and specifically proposes the appointment of liaisons between the IGF MAG and the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI established by WSIS+20.
- EuroDIG welcomes the UN decision to accord permanent status for the IGF; and recommends concrete actions now to be prioritised to strengthen the IGF with greater inclusivity including young people; more precision and clarity both in identifying global, regional and national priorities, and in task-setting; and more effective dissemination regionally of its concrete outputs (including those from its intersessional activities, notably the policy networks and dynamic coalitions) that inform policy decision-making processes at all levels.
Rapporteur: Paulo Glowacki, EURid Youth Committee, Izaan Khan, Member of the UK Internet Governance Forum steering committee
- EuroDIG recognizes that Europe’s dependencies on external digital technologies and infrastructures have created strategic vulnerabilities, including for democratic values. Europe must shape and self-determine its human-centric digital future while maintaining Internet openness, preserving choice of technologies and providers that adhere to open standards and interoperability, while remaining grounded in multistakeholder values and human rights.
- Digital sovereignty is a cumulative, transformative process that requires action by all stakeholders. This effort should consist of: active industrial policy such as investment in – and the development and scaling up of – trusted European platforms and players in Chips, semiconductors, Cloud, AI, open data; supporting investment in and maintenance of open source infrastructure, interoperability, and alignment of values. This should encourage innovation, while retaining balanced regulatory approaches to key issues like procurement, competition, privacy & cybersecurity.
- To achieve European digital sovereignty we must take a holistic approach, bringing together national policy multistakeholder efforts under a common European dimension to empower citizens, especially youth. Further, the importance of cognitive sovereignty and ensuring that European residents are afforded the ability to have a digital public sphere should be encompassed by this topic. We note the Cannes Declaration on the Sovereignty of the Mind in this regard.
- Digital sovereignty should ultimately be interpreted to mean resilient openness and strategic autonomy leveraging Europe’s strengths. Digital sovereignty should not mean isolation, stepping away from global digital cooperation, protectionism or the creation of walls that lead to fragmentation.
Rapporteur: Milica Vesović, Council of Europe
- In the public sector, trust is the foundation on which effective institutions and meaningful public service are built. Trustworthy AI is therefore not only about safe technology. It is about safeguarding democratic legitimacy, human agency, inclusion, and public trust. AI should be treated as critical societal infrastructure, alongside healthcare, education, welfare, and civic communication.
- Equality bodies and human rights institutions are essential to addressing algorithmic discrimination in public administration’s use of AI, especially where information and power asymmetries affect individuals’ ability to challenge harm.
- Efficiency cannot be the only measure of success in public-sector AI. AI should improve services not only from time and cost efficiency perspective, but also make them fairer, more accessible, transparent, inclusive, and trustworthy, through human-centered design focused on citizens’ rights and needs.
- Human oversight must be real, not symbolic. Public authorities need the capacity to understand, question, override, and remain accountable for AI-supported decisions. Trustworthy AI is achieved not only through regulation, but also when fairness, accessibility, inclusion, and accountability are built in by design and experienced by all citizens in practice.
- Human rights-based frameworks provide a foundation for trustworthy AI, ensuring alignment with democracy and the rule of law. Risk-based approaches support practical tools for risk analysis, stakeholder engagement, and mitigation of bias, exclusion, unequal access, and impacts on vulnerable groups.
- Trustworthy AI requires strong governance, technical standards, interoperability, and digital skills. With hundreds of AI-related standards already developed globally, the challenge is to translate this expertise into practical implementation of inclusive policies. Capacity building efforts are therefore essential to help countries assess their readiness, absorb global expertise, and advance responsible, human-centred digital transformation across sectors and borders.
Rapporteur: Murillo Salvador, University of Geneva
- We consider platforms as a social digital infrastructure of democracy. Yet platforms were not designed to fulfil a civic function. Instead, they optimize engagement, e.g., through the deployment of dark patterns like infinite scrolling. They are not neutral communication and information channels: they distort the public debate by enabling the spread of disinformation. In this context, civil society acting within platform ecosystems, such as fact-checking collectives and other actors, should be supported as key partners in the digital public sphere.
- We view the loss of cognitive sovereignty is an emerging risk linked to the embedding of AI into platforms. Algorithmic management, from recommendation systems to automated moderation, need to take into account democratic principles from the design stage and not as an afterthought. Provenance and verification mechanisms are crucial as AI-driven synthetic content and identities become more prominent in the digital public sphere, faster than regulations can be deployed. In this context, the deployment of AI tools themselves can go through preliminary steps of testing and sandboxing before reaching the market.
- Rules do not necessarily hamper innovation. In fact, existing regulation acts as a powerful deterrent for platforms’ worst outcomes in democracies. Participants called for stronger DSA compliance, and here civil society can play a key role as partners for public authorities to make platform operators accountable with regards to the law. At the same time, CoE frameworks provide foundations to expand users’ agency, and international human rights provide an universal basis for users seeking to make platforms take action where no regulation exists.
- The discussion invites us to move from consumer perspectives towards an understanding of digital citizenship as embedded in platforms. Platform design is a fluid outcome of choices. New business and engagement models should be incentivised, such as community-driven platforms that already exist and perform a civic function. At the same time, alternative forms of democratic engagement should be supported, outside of platforms, including deliberative and multistakeholder formats.