Organisers of the European Dialogue on Internet Governance hope to draw on Brazil’s lessons

Monika Ermert, Heise, Intellectual Property Watch, VDI-Nachrichten, Germany

PUBLISHED ON: 10 Jun 2014

A year ago the European Dialogue on Internet Governance was bristling with news of a system of pervasive surveillance revealed by former NSA-contractor Edward Snowden, governments showed off contained anger and private companies such as Google were already engaged in a charming initiative to win back trust. The news during this year’ss EuroDIG, “Digital Society at Stake” (June 12-13), are the NetMundial documents and, potentially a European answer to it. Both topics are related and both are still remarkably distant from “Realpolitik”.

A strong European message on the NetMundial documents would be what Michael Rotert, Board member of eco, the Association of the German Internet Economy, hopes for at the EuroDIG in Berlin. “That would be a success,” Rotert said talking to the Internet Policy Review shortly before the event.

Eco has been the host and main sponsor of the event that is, according to main institutional partner Council of Europe, expected to bring 600 participants to the German capital. German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier will open the seventh edition of the largest regional Internet Governance Forum.

How will EuroDIG advance from the achievements at NetMundial?

According to Rotert, the consensus on documents at NetMundial illustrate that the multi-stakeholder model is growing up. “We hope that the EuroDIG can capitalise on the NetMundial process”, Rotert said while acknowledging: without the revelations about the tapping of Dilma Rousseff's communication there might not have been a NetMundial. Surveillance will again be a topic in Berlin, “The Internet is broken” is the title of a panel that takes a stab at the dark side of internet politics.

Another driver of the Multi-stakeholder discussion and a topic for Berlin, too, is the planned release of the Internet Assigned Names and Numbers (IANA) from US oversight. While a European position on it would be nice, Rotert said, time for the reform before 2015 was quite tight. The IANA discussion includes the question: should changes in the management of central internet resources be debated by experts only or are the expert stakeholders responsible to organise a broader public debate?

Beside the major topics, NetMundial and the internet governance roadmap, there will be surveillance and privacy debates, ongoing debates about access, copyright, security, protection of minors and hate speech and, net neutrality.

Considerable gap between EuroDIG discussions and Realpolitik

The gap between the EuroDIG discussions and Realpolitik however, remains considerable, Rotert and Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Professor Emeritus for International Law and one of Germany's experts on internet governance, both confirm.

The 2010 EU Digital Agenda initiative, Kleinwächter said, was heavily focussed on economic aspects of ICT, while paying less attention to the global internet governance agenda. The EU institution most active in the creation of the EuroDIG had been the Strasbourg-based Council of Europe, said Kleinwächter. “More attention for the EuroDIG by the EU bodies, especially the new Parliament, would be good,” he added. Members of the European Parliament have attended EuroDIG conferences over the years, but participation has not been as active as in Internet Governance Fora.  

Beyond the institutional gaps, stakeholders also have a hard time coordinating main topics efficiently. The lack of concrete action with regard to surveillance illustrated this, Kleinwächter said.

Stakeholders need to bundle forces

As Rotert pointed out, while slow, the Internet Governance Dialogue meetings had resulted in tiny steps towards cooperation of the public and private sector. Today, Germany is considering making a bid to host the IGF in 2016, he said. Given that the German IGF – and to a considerable extent also the EuroDIG still are looking for quite some additional sponsoring – a leap in commitment by governments and companies is necessary to reach that.

There will not be a number of shiny side-events at this year’s EuroDIG, one of which is the Opening Party for the Factory – Berlin's new start-up and event forum. The programme will feature Berlin's Mayor Klaus Wowereit alongside Google's Eric Schmidt on 11 June. While the latter is meant to promote the Berlin start-up scene or Google products and services, it might divert attention away from the more theory-heavy governance agenda, Rotert is concerned.

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