Thomas Schneider – Keynote 01 2024
17 June 2024 | 16:00 EEST | Auditorium | 
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Consolidated programme 2024 overview / Opening
Shortbio
Ambassador Thomas Schneider is leading the Swiss delegation in various fora in the field of digital and internet governance, including AI.
In the past 20 years, he has been chairing several international committees and co-initiated several dialogue fora on national and international levels. He is currently the chair of the Council of Europe’s Committee on AI (CAI), mandated to negotiate a binding convention on AI.
He has been a co-initiator of EuroDIG and is the president of its Support Association, since 2012. He is a bureau member of the Council of Europe’s Steering Committee on Media and Information Society (he was its chair in 2018-19 and vice-chair in 2020-21). He chaired several CDMSI expert groups. He has also been a member of the bureau of the CoE’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence in 2019-2021. From 2014-2017, he was the chair of ICANN’s Governmental Advisory Committee and in this role negotiated the compromise among governments and with the other stakeholders regarding the “IANA Stewardship transition”, the biggest reform in the ICANN system. He was a vice-chair of the OECD’s Committee for Digital Economy Policy (2020-2022). He was responsible for the organization of the 12th UN IGF in Geneva in 2017 co-chair of the IGF’s Multistakeholder Advisory Group in 2017. He participated in the meetings of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation, as personal advisor of Swiss president Doris Leuthard (2018-2019). He has also been a co-initiator of the Swiss Internet Governance Forum, since 2013. Since 2003, he has been coordinating the Swiss activities with regard to the follow-up of the UN World Summit on the Information Society.
Video record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK2b7CjAzrM&t=1206s
Transcript
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Transcripts and more session details were provided by the Geneva Internet Platform
Thomas Schneider: Thank you, Sandra. And hello, everyone. I’m very happy to be back in Vilnius after the IGF 2010. So 500 years ago and with what has been going on since then. Sandra has already mentioned it. We are talking this time, we are talking way more about global processes that we have been involved in. And we are very happy to be back in Vilnius after the IGF 2010. In the past years, we were busy with the AI Act and the DMA and the DSA and all the things that the EU in particular is striving forward, which are important things to try and find a way to maximize opportunities and minimize risks in the digital space. But now in the past few months, there have been many international processes where everybody starts with saying we are at a crucial moment because many things will be decided in the next one and a half years. And indeed, of course, we are always at the crucial moment. We know this, but this time we are definitely in a crucial moment. And we’ve already heard it this morning. We do have some gaps in global digital governance that we can maybe not solve in Europe alone, but where we have to find agreement on a global level, which is not very easy. And we do have proposals on the table from other areas, from what we call not necessarily like-minded countries, that we need to tackle with. And of course, we are right when we say we should not duplicate existing processes that work well. On the other hand, of course, we know that there are gaps. We know that not all processes that exist work equally well. So we cannot just say, let’s not change anything. And instead of always reacting to ideas from others that we may not be convinced that they go in the right direction, we should take the time, we should take the opportunity to think about what is it that we want, we Europeans and people from elsewhere in the world, that are looking for ways for a more inclusive, more accountable, more transparent policymaking processes, whether they are multi-stakeholder, multilateral. And I think EuroDIG is an important moment to develop such ideas. We had a NetMundial in Brazil. So the Brazilians, together with the support of many of us here, have developed a vision. They have done something. They have produced a document. They have produced a blueprint for more inclusive processes on digital governance. And this is the example. We need to actively come up, produce a vision that we can present to others instead of just trying to prevent others from moving things forward because time doesn’t stand still. Digital world has progressed. Also, the internet governance and the digital policy architecture has progressed, but maybe not as much as it should. So there will be more important decisions that will be taken this year with the GDC and the Summit for the Future and the report of the UN AI, the HLAB report, and next year, of course, the WSIS Plus 20 and everything. We just had intense discussions in Geneva. So we’re happy to see also, of course, Thomas here. And if we don’t develop our own ideas, if we don’t bring in our own ideas, we’ll have to react and react and react and try to prevent others from doing, which is, again, probably not the best solution. So let’s use this opportunity of us gathering here. Let’s use and live the multistakeholder dialogue, but also, let’s say, policy or vision development in a multistakeholder framework. Because if we just talk about multistakeholderism but do not contribute to making it work, to having an effect that is tangible, that people feel, that people see, then, of course, that opens the door for other ideas that may less built on an inclusive and transparent vision. So let’s use these free days. And with this, I would like to very heartfully thank our Lithuanian hosts, everybody in the team. This is always an exercise that takes works and lots of nights and discussions. So we know how this is. So let me thank you. And as Sandra has said, we are still open for other hosts in the future. It is definitely a crucial time. So, yeah, any next dialogue opportunity is an important one. It’s needed. But it’s not just the host and the secretariat. We all need to participate. We need to devote resources that goes also to our bosses, to those that fund. Because if these are empty shells, then the others can say, well, the multistakeholder model doesn’t work. And we want it to work. So it’s the task for all of us. Thank you very much.