The concept of Digital Commons – highly open and shared digital resources which are maintained and governed by communities – represents a transformative approach to building a more open and equitable digital ecosystem. Through the Next Generation Internet (NGI) Commons project, supported by the European Commission, ‘Europe’ as such is developing an intellectual and policy basis for investing in and supporting Digital Commons as providers of public digital infrastructures that support European digital sovereignty and advance European values around digital-era governance.

This session will explore all the latest thinking around Digital Commons as a policy priority for Europe, through the prism of how Europe’s existing corpus of digital regulation – such as the Interoperable Europe Act and the AI Act – will be implemented, as well as by examining the activities and collaboration happening organically between European Member States. In so doing, it will highlight how community-driven governance models for open technologies – in particular, open source software – can promote collaboration, support reuse and maintenance of open technologies, and ultimately reduce dependencies on monopolistic platforms which are not aligned with European values.

More specifically, the session will delve into the practical frameworks and policy recommendations emerging from the NGI Commons initiative, showing how Digital Commons support and enable various existing and new policy initiatives in Europe, including the agenda of the new Commission and the work of the new Executive Vice President for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy, Henna Virkkunen. It will also elevate the work of various Member States, such as France, Germany, Estonia, and the Netherlands, and amplify new knowledge around some of the most prominent Digital Commons projects and communities from across the continent.