Welcome speeches 2026
26 May 2026 | 14:00 - 14:30 CEST | Alcide De Gasperi | 
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Consolidated programme 2026
- Thibaut Kleiner, Director for Future Networks in DG Connect, European Commission |
- Peter Janssen, General Manger EURid |
- Sandra Hoferichter, Secretary General | and Thomas Schneider, President, EuroDIG Support Association |
Video record
Transcript
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Florence Ranson: Thank you very much for being so punctual. We love audiences like this because it means we are not running late from the start of the afternoon. So that gives us hope for the rest of the day. So welcome. Welcome back. If you were with us this morning, welcome. If you are joining only now for EURODIG and you didn’t have the opportunity to join us this morning for the pre -sessions celebrating the 20th anniversary of .eu. But this is an ongoing celebration, so we’re going to continue throughout the rest of today and also tomorrow. So welcome to this new edition of EURODIG, the European Dialogue on Internet Governance. The event is hosted by EURID, and as I said, it is the celebration of the 20th anniversary of .eu, we also will focus on the very specificity of EURODIG.
It is not just another conference. you can attend in certain circumstances. EURODIG is a dialogue. So you all have a role to play, whether you’re here in the room with us, and it’s a full house, delighted to see that. But it works also for those of you who are following us online, and there are quite a few of you connected. So whether in the room or online, we will be relying on you to make comments, ask questions, and interact throughout the whole event, whether it’s today or tomorrow. And of course, we have set up some structure to do that, but there will also be open sessions for open questions as we go. We will be, during these two days, we will be listening to European voices for the future of the internet.
And we will celebrate. the 20 years of .eu but also the beginning of a new internet governance era quite an ambitious program and to set the scene for that event and welcome you all properly i would like to give the floor to representatives of the three organizations behind that ambitious program so please welcome our first speaker this afternoon please welcome a Thibaut Kleiner who’s director for future networks at DG connect at the European Commission good afternoon and please.
Thibaut Kleiner: Good afternoon nice to see so many familiar faces very happy to have a full house today and a full program indeed so indeed the Peter, Sandra ,Thomas excellencies distinguished guests dear friends of the European and global Internet landscape. I mean, today is our day. We will hear later on around 4 o ‘clock from the Executive Vice President of the Commission, Henna Virkkunen. But today I wanted to welcome you very warmly to this event. It’s a special event, not every day, that we have such an opportunity to join between the various participants. We are celebrating, indeed, 20 years of .eu, 20 years of European identity online. And this is also a special time because we are meeting just after the WSIS Plus 20 review, where, again, we had the opportunity to reassert the importance of the Internet and also when we made it possible for the Internet Governance Forum to be given a permanent place .
So if we go back in time, more than 20 years ago, the world had already decided to agree on some core principles for the Internet. And this matters still today. The Internet must be open and its governance must be global, cooperative, and multi -stakeholder. This may sound easy, but actually these principles every day have to be reaffirmed, reasserted, because they are the cardinal principles reflecting the nature of the Internet. The Internet is distributed, it’s interoperable, and it’s also cooperative. And we should never forget this, because this vision has brought so much benefits to the world. And this approach is very much… This approach aligns also to what the EU is all about. As an organization, we also are driven by principles.
We are driven by unity, but also by cooperation, and we are driven by the objective to make the world a better place. So the single market, which is our greatest achievement, needs not only open connectivity, it needs also to have global users and global markets reaching out and coming to Europe to make great things together. Citizens, researchers, inventors, we all want that people choose EU, choose Europe. And this is what is behind also the .eu as a domain name. When it was established, the aim was to give Europe a clear online identity to support the internal market increase, user choice, but also promote e -commerce at a time where it was accelerating, and also allow citizens across Europe.
The member states and businesses to present themselves as European online immediately, even through the name of their website. And 20 years later, we have more than 3 .8 million registered domain names. So .eu is actually one of the world’s largest country code top domain name. And it supports multilingualism, and it contributes significantly to security with the lowest level of DNS abuse cases. Not a small achievement. But today, we cannot just look at the past. If the first phase of the Internet governance was about building and expanding the open Internet, today’s challenge is to keep it open and accessible. And according to the ITU, there are still many people that are not online. 2 .2 billion people remain not connected to the Internet.
Can you believe it? We cannot accept that. And we need to do better collectively. And at the same time, if you look at the dynamics and the economics of the Internet, openness itself is under pressure. State -controlled or authoritarian models of the Internet have emerged, where technology is about controlling citizens instead of empowering them. Where shutting down connectivity, shutting down the Internet, blocking platforms, or restricting information flows is the name of the game. This is not what Europe stands for. We want to make sure that we provide a world where freedom of choice, where democracy, where equality, where the rule of law are preserved also online. And this is what we want also to achieve when we promote digital sovereignty.
Not a way to close down, but a way to empower and to give technology to those that need it. This is the digital transformation that we work for in the EU. This is about human -centric, and it’s about every individual having rights to benefit from technology. So next week, actually, the EU is about to propose a tech sovereignty package. You’ll hear more from the executive vice president. But here we want to make sure that we develop technologies that make freedom possible online. Where dependencies do not equate to becoming a kind of a tech colony of some kind, because you cannot control the products and the services that you develop yourself. Importantly, this is not about protectionism.
It’s about, again, empowerment. It’s about developing your capabilities. And most importantly, in the European vision, this technological, this digital sovereignty is something that we want to share with others, where we can collectively develop our capacities. Today, indeed, we cannot ignore the pressure from economic and private concentration on the digital world. A few actors only control access, control cloud infrastructure, control operating systems, data flows, cybersecurity, DNS service, and emerging AI capabilities. If this doesn’t mean that we all have access to these key elements, this is not anymore an open Internet. And this is a matter of attention we have now in the EU. We want to make sure that we will promote our digital rulebook as a way to protect openness and fair markets.
We have developed tools from competition policy to data protection to the Digital Markets Act. And the Digital Services Act. All of these are being used today to protect what we cherish. and to make sure that we also can continue with an Internet that is open and markets that are fair. But it’s not enough to have global rules. You need to be able to implement them from a position of strength because you are not fully dependent on a few of these companies. And this is why the EU is investing to reduce precisely our dependencies, to make sure that we invest in our own cybersecurity, in connectivity, in cloud, in chips technologies, in AI, and first and foremost in digital skills.
And we also want to act internationally so that we work with partners through the WISIS, but also through the Global Digital Compact, through the IGF, and through Global Gateway to also provide funding when it’s most needed. So what we believe is that we can do it. We believe that the next phase of the Internet is very exciting. But it also contains certain risks if we are not able to open up and maintain these foundations. We believe that AI, cloud, data, virtual worlds, cybersecurity, and digital public infrastructures will shape the future. But we need to shape it together. We need to make sure that these technologies will create opportunities and not be used to control excessively our initiatives.
Today, the EU is very pleased that we are on a post -Y6 plus 20 landscape where we can decisively work together. We want to explore new frameworks with international communities, many of you in the room. We want to make sure that we will promote these shared goals. And we want to make sure that with a permanent IGF, we can reach very concrete results. The global multi -stakeholder, we believe, is only credible if it is alive in practice, and not just something that you invoke when you need it. And actually, this is why EURODIG is so important. For years, EURODIG has provided Europe with an open space for dialogue. It has connected public authorities, private sector, but also the youth.
Very important. It has helped Europe to contribute to the global IGF and to the broader Internet governance system. But here as well, the landscape is changing, and EURODIG has to also change and evolve. It’s not just about a simple agenda, it’s about delivering on important promises. So we need to make sure that with this, EURODIG can become even more visible, more impactful, more sustainable. and more connected to the European technical community. This is where we have also things to discuss together. And also it is where European institutions, EuroID, the CCTLD community and other partners can support an evolution and make EURODIG a central piece in a new IGF. So in Europe, we believe in the multi -stakeholder model.
We believe in unity through diversity. And we believe that we can invest in spaces where our strength and hopes will live for a long time. 20 years ago, .eu gave Europe a clearer identity online. Today, we have a lesson learned. It means that we can build together trusted digital infrastructure without fragmenting the Internet. We believe that sovereignty is not a subject. If you design it well, it is an opportunity for all of us to share our capabilities and to become stronger. And it is an opportunity to make EURODIG really the place where we will meet again to deserve and prepare our contributions to the next 20 years of Internet governance. So if I have just one minute, and if I may, I also would like to pay tribute today to a very special lady.
Fabrizia Benigni, who is just here on the first row, because she is actually the initiator of of also the event today, and she had this great idea of combining our efforts, but also it’s a special moment for her because next week she actually will retire from our institution after something like 34 years of a brilliant career. So I wanted really to pay tribute to Fabrizia. Thank you also for being here with us. And if I may, I would like to ask you to join me with a round of applause for Fabrizia. Thank you. So dear colleagues, excellencies, I think today is a special day, but I think we also have a special conference. So please, I would invite you now to continue the exchanges and make sure that we can deliver for the period to come.
Thank you.
Florence Ranson: Thank you very much and i’d like now to give the floor to Peter Janssen general manager of Eurid.
Peter Janssen: Distinguished guests colleagues friends welcome to the european voices for the future of the Internet. Thank you for being here to celebrate 20 years of .eu and to look ahead at the beginning of a new era in Internet governance. I’m proud that we host this conference in close cooperation with the European Commission, and I’m grateful to everyone who has helped to make this gathering possible. Europe’s Internet future is shaped through dialogue, through shaped responsibility, and through the ability to turn principles into practical outcomes. I would also like to express a special word of thanks to the team Future Internet at DG Connect for its unwavering support in organizing this conference in this fantastic venue, and in particular to Martina Barbero for her relentless drive, who’s also in the first seat, for her relentless drive, professionalism, and commitment throughout this process.
So thank you very much, Martina. Europe has been entrusted to operate the .eu top -level domain in the public interest. We steward a piece of Europe’s digital infrastructure that millions of people and organizations rely on. That role comes with a clear duty to safeguard integrity, accessibility, security, and fair use. Every day, quietly and reliably. Over 20 years, .eu has earned its place as a trusted European space online. It serves citizens, entrepreneurs, civil society, and public institutions. It has helped organizations express who they are and where they belong in the European single market. This anniversary gives us reason to celebrate. but also reminds us of the responsibility to act with ambition, as the internet we depend on continues to evolve rapidly.
When Hewitt hosted EURODIG in Brussels in 2016, then Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, Günther Oettinger already emphasized in his keynote that trust is key to realizing the full potential of the digital era. A decade later, those words resonate even more strongly. To understand what this responsibility means in practice, we can look at the concept of technical sovereignty. Technical sovereignty means continuity. It means autonomy in the systems that underpin our digital lives. It means being able to keep essential services running, even when circumstances change. For .eu, that starts with registry autonomy. The It requires architectural choices that reduce dependency risks and enhance control and responsibility for core services. A clear part of this work is building an approach that supports openness and ecosystem diversity.
Open standards, interoperability, and a healthy supplier landscape strengthen resilience. This approach matters all the more because the broader context around us is increasingly international. Infrastructure markets are concentrating. Dependency risks grow when too much becomes tied to too few providers. In that environment, digital resilience becomes a strategic necessity. But sovereignty also exists on a personal level. In the freedom to choose and control your own digital identity. The most powerful yet simplest tool for that. is owning your own domain name. A .eu domain name gives people and organizations a European digital identity that spans borders. It works across the single market. It travels with you. It also unlocks personal digital sovereignty in a very concrete way. When you own your domain name, you own your online coordinates.
You can create your own email addresses on your own domain. You can use your own website address in every communication. And your email and your web address represent you, your name, your organization, your purpose. And with that ownership comes freedom of choice. You can change email providers without changing your email identity. You can change hosting providers without changing your web address. You can upgrade services, switch to better options, or diversify suppliers while keeping the identity that people own. How do you know and trust? This is a practical form of sovereignty that citizens and organizations can adopt immediately, here, today, and now. It supports business continuity for organizations, it supports independence for individuals, and it supports competitiveness for SMEs that work across borders.
But technology only works when people trust it, and that trust is built through security, through reliability, and through the confidence that the systems we depend on are aligned with values we share. This is where Europe has a unique role to play. Europe stands for an Internet that remains open, free, secure, and trustworthy. An Internet where citizens and organizations can participate. Where they can participate with confidence, knowing that their rights, their identity, and their data are protected. And that is also the responsibility behind .eu. For 20 years, .eu has provided stable and trusted digital infrastructure for millions of users across borders, not only as a technical service, but as part of a broader European digital ecosystem built on resilience, cooperation, and trust.
And in a time of growing geopolitical uncertainty and increasing digital dependency, trusted European infrastructure matters more than ever. People want to participate confidently in digital life. Organizations want to grow across borders without fragility in the foundations they rely on. Communities want an Internet that remains open, secure, and aligned with democratic values. Europe’s single market was built to give people and organizations the freedom to operate across borders. A European digital identity should offer the same freedom online. A domain name is not only a technical label, it is a statement of presence, it is a decision to participate, it is a way to take control of your digital identity. That is what .eu represents. So on this anniversary we celebrate 20 years of a trusted European namespace.
For 20 years, Europe has helped build a home on the internet where all European citizens and organizations can thrive in a single market. As former Czech President Václav Havel once said, vision is not enough, it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stair up the steps, we must step up the stairs. Europe is ready to climb those steps, together with all of you. I wish you a productive and inspiring conference. Thank you.
Florence Ranson: Thank you very much. I’d like now to give the floor to Sandra Hoferichter and Thomas Schneider, respectively Secretary General and President of EURODIG Support Association. Welcome to both.
Sandra Hoferichter: Dear participants, dear distinguished experts, colleagues, teams from the European Commission DG Connect and the team from EURID. Welcome to this IG Fest – that was our working title – for the joint endeavour of EURid, the European Commission and EuroDIG. For EuroDIG it is the 19th edition in a row and next year we are celebrating another 20th anniversary, and we are proud of it! But this year it is on .eu to celebrate two decades that strived towards European digital identity. Happy birthday EURid! Thank you for including us in your celebration. Big thanks also to the European Commission and colleagues from DG Connect for engaging over the last month as institutional partner and shaping the programme and offering your house. But last but not least our thanks and appreciation also goes to the Programme Committee, the Focal Points and Organinsing Teams that have worked on the session details in multistakeholder groups.
Multistakeholder participation is on the rise. In many areas where public policy is shaped, the involvement of various interest groups is increasingly demanded. The bottom-up approach to setting the agenda, combined with equal participation of all stakeholders, promises to strengthen the legitimacy of European institutions and promote greater acceptance of legislation. However, multistakeholder dialogue platforms like EuroDIG are not yet very common. A network of regional and national IGFs across all continents only exists for the emerging technologies as a result of the UN WSIS process and rooted in the nature of shared responsibilities in governing the Internet. This is a great value that must be defended.
National and regional IGFs operate like the UN IGF, on the basis of shared principles and values. The representation of all relevant interest groups and the participatory setting of the agenda must be balanced and coordinated. They should be easily accessible to all interested parties, including marginalised groups and minorities. Gaining legitimacy to facilitate this complex process needs the commitment from all stakeholders and resources. The purpose of multistakeholder dialogue platforms is to foster debates on public policy issues within a sector. All stakeholders must be given the opportunity to present their views, identify problems and engage in critical but always respectful exchanges with other stakeholders.
Ideally, the outcome of such a process is a shared consensus on a specific issue, or at least clarity about the obstacles and the commitment to overcome them. The aim is not to present solutions, but first of all to get a common understanding among all stakeholders of what the issue is and discuss the different perspectives. What might not be considered an issue for one stakeholder group might be a challenge for another group. Listening and understanding the perspectives of other stakeholders is essential. And this is exactly what you can expect from the next 2 days.
I was asked recently if multistakeholder dialogue platforms can reshape legitimacy in Europe? Well, Europe has a tradition of consensus-building, and the European Union is an example of how consensus can be achieved across national borders in a fairly large region. Today, however, we are seeing a growing trend towards national isolationism. For example, legislation developed at the EU level seems to be less accepted at national levels. It is often seen as irrelevant to the region, disconnected from the needs of citizens, overregulated, or it is simply not understood. A multistakeholder dialogue could complement legislative procedures. In particular, regional and national initiatives are closer to the people. They create more accessible spaces for none state actors to get involved in policy discussions. Language, cultural references and contextual understanding make participation more relevant.
In a global agenda that is often dominated by powerful voices, regional dialogues ensure that local perspectives are not lost but strengthened. All too often, global frameworks are disconnected from the realities of implementation. Regional or national processes can act as intermediaries, adapting global norms to local contexts and enriching global agendas with practical knowledge based on the lived experiences of regions. Looking ahead, we should invest in European multistakeholder dialogue platforms that are inclusive, well-resourced and politically supported. The bottom-up approach can address the growing legitimacy gap in Europe’s public policymaking. By bringing together all stakeholders on an equal footing, they create inclusive spaces for understanding complex issues, reconciling diverse perspectives and building trust through continuous, respectful engagement. While these platforms do not aim to replace parliamentary or legislative processes, they can meaningfully complement them by acting as early warning systems, barometers of societal needs and bridges between global norms and local realities.
You are here to make an impact, and I wish you two days of inspiring talks, unexpected insights and al lot of new, valuable contacts. Thank you very much!
Thomas Schneider: Dear friends, first of all thanks for your time. for, after exactly 10 years, getting us back to Brussels again for the second time. It’s always a pleasure to be here. We know that AI and other new technologies are transforming our world at a higher pace than all previous technologies, and that there are unprecedented opportunities and risks. People are struggling to cope with these rapid developments. And in addition, if that wasn’t enough, we have rising tensions on geopolitical levels. Some leaders of big economic and military powers think that they can ignore existing rules just because they are big and powerful enough to do so. There’s a lot of uncertainty, and people are nervous, and many look for guidance.
Some people are hoping for easy solutions and are willing to follow people that promise such easy solutions, which may unfortunately lead to even more problems. More polarization and not necessarily solutions in our societies. So Europe is under growing pressure on all levels. Economic, defense, innovation capabilities, all this is put into questions. But I think that in Europe we do have an enormous potential, but we need to better use it in order to defend our values and interests and to maintain our freedom to act in a sovereign way. We need to understand that every country in Europe is too small to fight alone. So all Europeans need to unite and cooperate more closely on all fields mentioned above.
Of course, such cooperation is not easy. As we’ve already heard, Europe is a very diverse continent with many different cultures, diverse histories and diverse circumstances. So it is not enough to just cooperate among governments. We need to convince the majority of the people in the industries in every single country in Europe that working together constructively, pragmatically and respectfully is our best option. And we know that there are powers that have an interest in the European Union and in the European Union. And they are dividing us so that we do not get stronger together. I think we should not do these powers this favor and let them divide us. But this means that we need to work hard to earn the trust of our stakeholders on national and European levels so that they support a stronger pan -European cooperation.
We need to make sure that the legitimate issues of concerns of our people and industries are heard and properly addressed. And we need to prove that we are able to develop solutions that offer perspective to all Europeans. Multi -stakeholder dialogue platforms, in particular EURODIG, play a central role in this regard. EURODIG allows us to identify opportunities and challenges and pave the way towards decisions that actually make things better and not worse. I’m also aware that there are voices out there that say in times where the big actors ignore rules and decide over our heads, we should also act more top -down and less inclusively. But given the democratic nature of our societies and the freedom that we want to give to our people and our industries, I do not think that this is a good idea to move away from multistakeholder cooperation.
To the contrary, we need to reform and strengthen our multistakeholder structures to make them more inclusive and more effective and more politically visible at the same time. Multistakeholder cooperation is not for free. It means work, and it requires resources. This is why my government, the Swiss government, has contributed to the funding and the secretariat of the EURODIG Secretariat since its very first days. In this regard, I would like to thank all other supporters of EURODIG for their longstanding commitments. And of course, I would like to thank all the hosts of the 19 EURODIG meetings so far. In this regard, I would like to thank again the European Commission and EURODIG, but also the Council of Europe for their support, and host for host, hosting EURODIG twice in Brussels and twice in Strasbourg.
Talking about hosts, and I’ll end with this. If you are interested in hosting the 20th EURODIG… next year in your city, please contact us because we are still open to interesting ideas. Thank you very much.
Florence Ranson: Thank you very much. I’m sure some of you will pick up on that call from Thomas, so I’m sure you will be getting some interesting offers maybe before the end of the event itself. So we have set the scene, or rather our opening speakers have set the scene. The time has come for our first exchange session.