2nd meeting of the Digital Participatory Forum – Digital Sovereignty
14 April 2026, 15:00 – 17:00
Rue Belliard 99-101, 1040 Brussels, meeting room JDE 70 and online via Interactio [instructions to follow]
Interpretation regime: EN/FR/DE/IT/SV
EU's Digital sovereignty – the EU’ s capacity to exercise strategic independence in the digital domain while remaining open and connected to global networks – has become a defining priority for the EU, as technological dependencies increasingly shape Europe’s economic resilience, security, and geopolitical autonomy. The European Commission's Joint Research Centre briefing on "Open but Not Powerless: Towards a Common Understanding of EU Digital Sovereignty" stresses that the EU continues to rely heavily on non-EU providers for key technologies such as AI, cloud infrastructure, and core software, creating critical vulnerabilities across economic and security dimensions. The brief calls for targeted strategic action to reduce these dependencies, strengthen European capabilities, and ensure that digital transformation aligns with European values, trust, and democratic governance. Recent independent analyses confirm this trend, noting that Europe’s overreliance on foreign digital ecosystems – especially in cloud and data infrastructure – poses systemic risks and undermines the EU’s capacity to protect sensitive data and shape global digital norms.
EU cities and regions are not immune to these strategic vulnerabilities: they are key actors in investing into and managing digital infrastructure, including fibre optics and 5G networks. At the same time, they are contributing to the uptake and adoption of new technologies, including AI and (potentially) quantum when providing public services to citizens and undertakings. Cities and regions tend also to be preferred targets for cyberattacks, often due to the lack of human, financial and technical resources to build a "reasonably" strong digital resilience.
Therefore, in order to contribute to the ongoing debate on EU digital sovereignty and its implications on cities and regions, the 2nd Digital Participatory Forum will look at three different elements of digital transformation of cities and regions and their effect on EU digital sovereignty:
- Digital infrastructure, cyber-security
- Artificial Intelligence and data use
- Simplification versus deregulation and their spill-over effects on third countries
Programme
15:00 – 15:10 Welcome
- Alberto Cirio, Chair of the ECON commission and President of the Piedmont region
15:10 – 15:20 Keynote speech – boosting demand for EU solutions
- Cristina Caffarra, Chairperson, EuroStack Initiative Foundation e.V.
15:20 – 15:30 Cities and regions' actions towards digital sovereignty across the EU
- Philippe Van Damme, Deputy Director-General, DG Digit, European Commission
15:30 – 16:10 Digital sovereignty reflected in CoR opinions
- Alberto Cirio, rapporteur for the CoR opinion on AI Continent Action Plan
- Zdeněk Hřib, rapporteur for the CoR opinion on Cybersecurity Review and Digital Networks Act
- Pehr Granfalk, rapporteur for the CoR opinion on Digital simplification and Data Union Strategy
- Branislav Zacharides, rapporteur for the CoR opinion on European Business Wallets
16:10 – 16:55 Discussion with participants
16:55 Closing remarks