Welcome 2018

5 June 2018 | 09:30-10:15 | GARDEN HALL | |
Consolidated programme 2018 overview

Welcome session 2018

• Dimitry Kumsishvili, First Vice Prime Minister, Ministry of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia
• Mariya Gabriel, Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, EU
• Sandra Hoferichter, Secretary General EuroDIG
  
  

Transcripts

Keynote video message
by Commissioner Mariya Gabriel for European Dialogue on Internet Governance (EuroDIG)
Tbilisi, Georgia 5 June 2018

Dear Prime Minister Kvirikashvili,
Dear Minister Kumsishvili,
Dear Ministers,
Dear Members of the European Parliament,
Ladies and gentlemen

I am honoured to address the 11th European Dialogue on Internet Governance with its vibrant community of digital innovators and policy makers.

My only regret is that I cannot be there in person. I had planned to attend, but as you most probably know, I am at the moment finalising one of the major achievements of the next Multiannual Financial Framework which is the ground-breaking new Digital Europe Programme that will be adopted tomorrow by the College of Commissioners.

Nevertheless, I want to take this occasion to thank personally, Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili for the warm invitation that was extended to me. As well, I would like to thank Mr. Dimitri Kumsishvili, Minister of Economy and Sustainable Development of Georgia and the Georgian Government for their warm welcome to the European Internet Governance community.

EuroDIG is one of the most successful and most relevant regional initiatives on Internet Governance.

And, we can feel proud; Europe plays a leading role in shaping the research and the policy agendas for Internet innovation and will continue to do so.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We are now at a crossroad: Europe can embrace the digital technological revolution brought by the disruptive development of Artificial Intelligence, blockchain, immersive technologies, and others, or endure it.

The choice is ours.

And certainly, my choice is to look at the future with optimism and determination.

Europe has important cultural and societal values that will help us take full advantage of the digital transformation, while addressing the tensions and challenges it creates. Freedom of speech, freedom to conduct a business, inclusiveness, distribution of resources and power – these are European values that are mirrored by principles such as openness, accessibility and decentralization that have been at the core of the Internet since the beginning.

But we should not be naïve. We are also facing important issues that need to be fixed. Recent polls show that the trust on the Internet is decreasing. Users are not only concerned about the use of their personal data and cybersecurity, but also about the reliability of the Internet as a source of information.

Nowadays, one out of two European users limits their online activities including banking services or e-commerce due to security or privacy issues. Moreover, users express concerns over the pre-dominance of a few market players and the potential risk in terms of abuse of market power, control of content or the control of vast amounts of personal data.

This is why we need, now more than ever, to anchor our policies and our actions in our common European values. This will allow us to build our digital society on solid ground and to re-establish trust in the Internet.

On the 25th May, the General Data Protection Regulation officially became applicable. The GDPR is a major achievement. It is the most advanced piece of legislation on data protection in the world. Once again, Europe is a pioneer and we truly hope other countries will follow our example.

Contrary to what I sometimes hear, the GDPR will not contribute to the fragmentation of the Internet. On the contrary, it will enhance trust and entice more people to connect and increase their use of the Internet.

One particular case that is attracting a lot of attention at the moment is the way the WHOIS directories for generic top-level domains are evolving in order to ensure compliance with GDPR.

The position of the European Commission is very clear: the WHOIS system should ensure full compliance with GDPR, while preserving the public interest functions of WHOIS, which range from law enforcement to cybersecurity and intellectual property rights protection.

It is now the responsibility of ICANN to develop and implement a complete WHOIS model, also addressing access to WHOIS data for legitimate purposes. I see this as a core task of ICANN in the interest of maintaining the security and stability of the Internet.

The European Commission has already provided constructive input and we remain fully committed to supporting ICANN and the community in finding a solution.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I would like to share my thoughts with you about what I see as the key building blocks of the Internet of tomorrow.

The way I envision it, it will be a human centric Internet or an internet of humans. It will have to be trustworthy, resilient, sustainable and inclusive.

First, trust is a precondition to unlock the full potential of the Internet.

To ensure trust we need first to design an Internet that empowers users with choice and control on the use of their data. We now have the legal framework, but to make the GDPR a reality, we need the technologies to allow individuals to be fully in charge of their personal data. In the future Internet, people should have full transparency on the use of their data and be able to choose to contribute to social good by sharing their data in areas as diverse as health, democracy, environment, or mobility. This is essential to unleash the power of data both economically and socially.

We also need to implement mechanisms for guaranteeing and checking the authenticity of the information on the Internet. As announced in the Communication on tackling online disinformation, we will accelerate the deployment of new technologies to tackle disinformation: reputation tools, blockchain-based mechanisms to ensure the integrity and the traceability of content, AI-based content filtering, cognitive search algorithms to assess the accuracy and the quality of data sources.

As the Internet becomes increasingly autonomous, we need to maintain human control. Artificial Intelligence will help humans and inform their decisions but humans will continue taking the important decisions (for example medical decisions). The increasing level of autonomy of applications and devices has to be matched by increased openness, transparency and predictability of the algorithms and decision-making process.

Secondly, on resilience, it is clear that we need to do much more to ensure the security of our networks, of our data and our applications. This is why Europe seeks leadership in encryption and in secure communication technologies, for instance based on quantum. For that, we need to be able to test these technologies and deploy them at scale to secure key Internet applications and the underlying Internet infrastructure. This is an area where our proposed European cybersecurity competence centre will play a central role.

Decentralisation of the Internet will also be essential to increase resilience, as well as user control. Distributed ledger technologies and blockchain-based architectures have the potential to increase trust, transparency and traceability of transactions on the Internet. This is why we have set up the European Blockchain Partnership, which will be a vehicle for cooperation amongst Member States on blockchain. It will prepare for the launch of EU-wide blockchain applications.

Thirdly, on the sustainability of the Internet, we need to make a special effort to develop green architectures and technologies to minimise electricity consumption and to reduce the carbon footprint of the Internet while the amount of data stored, transmitted and computed on the Internet increases.

Last but not least, a human-centric Internet should reflect the openness, diversity and the inclusion that are at the core of European values.

The Internet should allow all citizens to interact and to take part in the online society. This is why we aim at an Internet that is “language transparent”, where devices and machines are able to fully understand various languages and interact with humans. Europeans, irrespective of their age and physical condition should be able to interact seamlessly with each other and their online environment with the help of adapted interfaces and AI agents.

Of course to allow all Europeans enjoy the benefits of advanced Internet services and technologies, it will be essential to upskill citizens of all ages, and to adapt our education systems to the requirements of a digital economy.

To implement this vision based on trust, human control, resilience, openness, diversity and inclusion, an intense effort in research and innovation will be needed, including at European level. This is a discussion we will have in the coming months with the Member States. I am confident they will support our high level of ambition for digital in the next European budget.

In this vision, Internet governance fora will be more crucial than ever, especially in their role of raising awareness among users. Informed users are, in fact, empowered users; users that are capable of discerning fake news from real facts; that are in control of their personal data and their online identity; users that build their own digital landscape and are ultimately at the core of this future Internet, an internet of humans.

I hope that we will continue to work together to achieve this.

Thank you very much for your attention.

I wish you rich and fruitful discussions

Source: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/commissioners/2014-2019/gabriel/announcements/keynote-video-message-commissioner-mariya-gabriel-european-dialogue-internet-governance-eurodig_en