New Digital Commons Report: Towards a sovereign digital infrastructure of Commons in Europe

The European Working Team on Digital Commons with the French Council Presidency has published a new report on Digital Commons entitled ‘Towards a sovereign digital infrastructure of Commons, which makes clear that investing in digital commons should be a core element of the European effort to build sovereign digital infrastructures that leverage the power of digital networks in a non-hegemonic way.

The report calls for the establishment of a European foundation for digital commons that can act as a facilitator between digital commons ecosystem actors and public authorities and contribute to nurturing the development of digital commons ecosystems across Europe.

The report has had the support of 17 EU member states and establishes an important baseline for future work on strengthening the digital commons. Some of the interventions to achieve this are:

• Definition of Digital Commons. According to the report authors, we understand Digital Commons as: ‘...non-rivalrous and non-exclusive resources defined by distributed and communal production, ownership and governance of informational capacities and technology. They intertwine collaborative governance and open data, open source as well as the principles of open standardisation.’
• Strengthening digital commons, through the creation of ‘a strong public-civic-private partnership and participate in the development of sustainable open data and open source ecosystems for public good’.
• Establishing a European foundation for digital commons. The report highlights the importance of founding a permanent team to support the European structure for digital commons, to develop instruments in cooperation with digital commons communities and to involve them in the governance of these instruments.
• ‘Digital Commons First’. This final proposal claims that legislators must take the needs and practices of digital commons and public institutions into account when drafting regulatory interventions, rather than on the limited approach of procurement of data services.

Digital commons are a unique opportunity to support European digital sovereignty and to be able to have the opportunity to position Europe at the forefront of the defence of a free, open, and democratic digital society.

Also, digital commons' main mission is undoubtedly closed to NGI one: to create an Internet that responds to people’s fundamental needs, including trust, security, and inclusion, while reflecting the values and the norms all citizens enjoy in Europe.

If you want to know more about the Digital Commons Report, you can read the full article here.

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