European Next Generation Internet: The Principles

Europe’s Next Generation Internet is a strategy: build trustable, interoperable, secure, privacy-first infrastructure—and turn rights, resilience, and standards into advantage now.

Europe’s “Next Generation Internet” agenda is best understood as an industrial strategy disguised as a values project. It is not merely a program to fund nicer technology, nor a nostalgic attempt to “return the internet to its roots.” It is a deliberate effort to shift the internet’s underlying logic away from extraction, lock-in, and fragile centralization—and toward infrastructure that Europe can legitimately claim as its comparative advantage: trustworthy systems that are governable, resilient, and aligned with democratic society.

The core premise is that the internet has become too important to be treated as a neutral medium. It now mediates identity, livelihoods, education, public services, finance, and the informational environment that shapes political stability. When these layers are controlled by opaque incentives or concentrated gatekeepers, the result is not only privacy loss or consumer dissatisfaction; it is systemic vulnerability. NGI reframes the challenge as a design problem: the architecture of the internet itself must encode rights, safety, and accountability as default properties.

This reframing is also a competitive diagnosis. Europe does not need to win a race for the largest consumer platforms to become a global leader in the internet’s next phase. Instead, it can win by owning the “trust layer” the world increasingly needs: secure-by-default systems, privacy-preserving computation, verifiable governance, and interoperable building blocks that institutions can adopt without surrendering strategic control. In a world defined by cyber risk, synthetic media, and escalating regulation, legitimacy becomes a product feature—and Europe can supply it at scale.

The article therefore treats NGI as a landscape of opportunity, where technical principles are not abstract ideals but levers for market creation. Human-centric rights-by-design becomes a way to turn legitimacy into exportable architecture. Privacy-by-default becomes the foundation for new data collaboration models that do not require raw data pooling. Security-by-design and resilience become a competitive wedge for critical sectors. Interoperability and open standards become the mechanism that re-opens markets by lowering switching costs and reducing dependency.

Seen this way, each principle is a strategy to invert a common failure mode of the modern internet. Where lock-in concentrates power, portability restores contestability. Where surveillance economics drives over-collection, minimization changes incentives. Where closed stacks create opaque dependencies, open standards and verifiability enable audit and substitution. Where centralized platforms create systemic fragility, federation distributes risk and makes governance plural. The “next generation” is not one technology—it is a structural redesign of power, incentives, and accountability.

Europe’s distinctive advantage is that it can operationalize these principles through mechanisms that other regions often cannot coordinate as effectively. Procurement can shape default markets; public services can become adoption engines; standardization can create interoperability at continental scale; and a strong tradition of safety and quality standards can translate into assurance-grade digital infrastructure. The question is not whether Europe has the values—it is whether it can convert them into deployable reference stacks, measurable requirements, and sustainable ecosystems that small and medium providers can actually participate in.

That last point matters: NGI will fail if it produces only prototypes, fragmented projects, or compliance burdens that only incumbents can absorb. The internet shifts when the “right way” becomes the easiest way: when there are reusable components, tested interoperability, predictable governance templates, and business models that do not require surveillance. This requires funding the unglamorous layer—maintenance, integration, packaging, tooling, operational workflows—so that good principles become production-grade infrastructure.

The stakes are rising because the internet is now being reshaped by AI. Ranking, moderation, search, and content creation are increasingly automated, and the risks scale with that automation: synthetic misinformation, invisible discrimination, untraceable decisions, and industrialized fraud. NGI’s principles therefore become even more urgent: without provenance, auditability, contestability, and privacy-preserving architectures, AI will amplify the internet’s existing failure modes. With them, AI can be deployed in ways institutions can justify and societies can trust.

What follows is a map of twelve principles that function as Europe’s blueprint for the internet’s next phase. Each principle is framed as: an architectural claim, a hidden strategic advantage for Europe, and a practical leadership move that turns the claim into market reality. Taken together, they define a coherent opportunity: Europe can become the world’s supplier of governable digital infrastructure—systems that do not merely work, but can be trusted, audited, switched, and sustained.

Summary

1) Human-centric rights by design

• Core premise: Redesign the internet’s default incentives so dignity, agency, due process, fairness, and safety are engineering requirements rather than optional policies.

• European advantage: Europe can productize legitimacy—turning values into deployable architectures and a “trust premium” that institutions and regulated sectors will pay for.

• Strategic move: Define testable rights-properties (portability, contestability, anti-dark-pattern constraints) and ship reference stacks that public procurement can standardize on.

2) Privacy by default and data minimization

• Core premise: Make privacy the baseline state: minimize collection, retention, and exposure (including metadata and inference), so systems remain safe even under compromise.

• European advantage: Europe can lead the global supply of privacy primitives (PETs, privacy-preserving analytics, privacy computation) for regulated and cross-border environments.

• Strategic move: Industrialize PET usability (toolchains, benchmarks, integrations) and institutionalize privacy-preserving analytics via procurement requirements.

3) Security by design and resilience

• Core premise: Build systems where security emerges from architecture: least privilege, segmentation, secure updates, supply-chain integrity, and routine recovery.

• European advantage: Europe can dominate “assurance-grade resilience” for critical sectors without needing to win consumer attention platforms.

• Strategic move: Standardize hardened baselines, publish EU reference deployments, and fund operational security UX so even SMEs can run secure systems.

4) Open standards and interoperability

• Core premise: Prevent lock-in by making protocols, formats, and APIs substitutable; standards must come with conformance tests and governance, not just documentation.

• European advantage: Interoperability turns Europe’s multi-country structure into a coordinated market where multi-vendor ecosystems can scale.

• Strategic move: Make standards-first procurement mandatory and fund shared test suites/certification so interoperability is real in production.

5) Decentralization and federation

• Core premise: Distribute power and failure across many operators; the real challenge is operability (moderation, upgrades, abuse response), not protocols.

• European advantage: Federation matches Europe’s institutional reality and creates resilient ecosystems plus new SME markets (managed federation).

• Strategic move: Invest in operator tooling and safety layers, and ensure portability + identity work across federated providers.

6) User-controlled identity and credentials

• Core premise: Shift from platform accounts to portable identity and verifiable credentials with selective disclosure, revocation, and recovery built in.

• European advantage: Europe can own the trust rails of regulated life (education, licensing, benefits) and solve cross-border identity—its natural killer use case.

• Strategic move: Standardize trust frameworks, provide issuer/verifier tooling, and scale issuance via public services while enforcing multi-provider competition.

7) Data portability and personal data stores

• Core premise: Separate data from applications: permissioned access, standard schemas, and usable migration make switching providers realistic.

• European advantage: Portability re-opens markets dominated by incumbents and enables a European “data layer” industry (vault hosting, migration, compliance tooling).

• Strategic move: Fund schemas + conformance tests, require portability in procurement, and prevent new monopolies through multi-provider rules.

8) Transparency, verifiability, and auditability

• Core premise: Trust requires verifiable behavior: provenance, protected audit trails, accountable governance, and usable explanations at the interface level.

• European advantage: Europe can lead “assurance infrastructure” and export trust services (audits, certification tooling, secure build/release pipelines).

• Strategic move: Mandate verifiability properties in procurement and fund shared verification infrastructure that SMEs can adopt without prohibitive cost.

9) Open-source digital commons and sustainable stewardship

• Core premise: Treat core primitives as commons: open code must be maintained, secured, governed, and packaged into deployable stacks to be a real public good.

• European advantage: A strong commons accelerates SMEs, reduces dependency risk, and becomes exportable infrastructure (standards + implementations).

• Strategic move: Fund maintainers and release engineering, create commons-to-market pathways (reference deployments, LTS distributions), and pay for upkeep through procurement.

10) Inclusion and accessibility by default

• Core premise: Accessibility is a system requirement across disability, language, cognition, bandwidth, and device constraints—baked into components and delivery pipelines.

• European advantage: “Universal digital infrastructure” can become Europe’s quality signature, improving adoption and reducing societal support costs.

• Strategic move: Make accessibility non-negotiable in procurement, fund shared accessible component libraries, and enforce continuous accessibility testing.

11) Sustainability and green internet constraints

• Core premise: Treat energy, hardware longevity, and lifecycle impact as first-class engineering constraints; optimize outcomes per resource, not just growth.

• European advantage: Europe can lead durable, long-support infrastructure through standards and procurement (repairability, low-footprint stacks).

• Strategic move: Establish measurable baselines (energy/reporting), publish long-support reference stacks, and align incentives toward longevity and efficiency.

12) Trustworthy AI with real human oversight

• Core premise: AI must be governable: clear responsibility, contestability, continuous evaluation, provenance, privacy-preserving operation, and real override capability.

• European advantage: Europe can own the premium segment—auditable AI for public-interest and regulated domains—and export governance toolchains.

• Strategic move: Standardize AI oversight primitives, build reference architectures for high-stakes deployments, and industrialize evaluation/assurance ecosystems.

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The Principles

1) Human-centric internet and fundamental rights by design

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

A next generation internet is “human-centric” when the system’s default behavior protects the person, even when incentives, operators, or user attention fail. “Fundamental rights by design” is the move from policy language to technical constraints.

What this actually implies at the level of the internet’s architecture and product logic:

A. Rights become non-negotiable system requirements

• In classic software, requirements are things like latency, reliability, throughput.

• In NGI logic, requirements also include: privacy, dignity, non-discrimination, contestability, and freedom from coercive design.

• The system must be structured so rights-respecting behavior is the path of least resistance (defaults, constraints, guardrails), not a user-side burden (“read 40 pages and configure everything perfectly”).

B. User agency is not a settings page; it is a power relationship
Agency means a user can:

• Understand what’s happening (legibility of data flows and decisions).

• Decide meaningfully (consent that is specific, granular, and reversible).

• Exit without losing their life (portability of data, identity, and relationships).

• Recover after mistakes (safe defaults, undo, reversion, minimal blast radius).

If leaving a service destroys your social graph, your archives, your identity, or your ability to function—then the system is not human-centric; it is dependency-centric.

C. Dignity means “no coercion-by-design”
A human-centric internet explicitly rejects growth mechanics built on:

• dark patterns,

• addictive engagement optimization,

• exploitative personalization,

• consent fatigue traps,

• manipulative nudges that undermine autonomy.

This is not moralizing—it’s about eliminating a design incentive that reliably creates social harm.

D. Fairness and non-discrimination must be engineered, not promised
When systems rank, recommend, filter, or enforce (often via automation):

• users need predictable treatment,

• consistent rules,

• and mechanisms for remedy when errors occur.

A rights-by-design system expects that mistakes will happen and therefore builds:

• transparency about decisions (at least at the functional level),

• appeal routes,

• and accountability for operators.

E. Due process is a core internet primitive (not only a legal concept)
The internet increasingly mediates life outcomes: access to communities, reputation, employment pathways, public services, payments, identity verification.
So, NGI logic implies:

• clear responsibility (who operates the rule set),

• clear process (how decisions are made),

• clear recourse (how decisions can be challenged),

• and bounded power (no silent, arbitrary, irreversible exclusion).

F. Safety is societal infrastructure, not optional moderation
Human-centric internet design treats safety as part of the base layer:

• fraud resistance,

• harassment controls,

• anti-abuse mechanisms,

• child-safe defaults where relevant,

• operational resilience to coercion and coordinated manipulation.

Safety is not “community management” alone; it is part of system architecture and incentive design.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

This principle is where Europe can turn a perceived constraint into an advantage: legitimacy becomes product value.

1) “Trust as a product category”
As digital risk rises (fraud, deepfakes, coercive manipulation, mass profiling), many buyers—public sector, regulated industries, institutions, families—will choose systems that are:

• auditable,

• rights-respecting by default,

• predictable in governance,

• and safer to adopt at scale.

Europe can own that premium category if it becomes the region that consistently ships “trustable-by-default” infrastructure.

2) Converting European values into exportable architecture
Europe can make rights operational by producing reusable patterns:

• consent and permission models that actually work,

• portability mechanisms that reduce lock-in,

• governance templates for contestability and appeals,

• transparency interfaces (“why am I seeing this?”, “who accessed my data?”, “why was this action taken?”).

That becomes exportable know-how and infrastructure—not just regulation.

3) A structural fit with Europe’s multi-actor ecosystem
Europe is not one monolithic market; it’s many institutions and many operators.
Human-centric internet architectures that emphasize:

• interoperability,

• federated governance,

• modular components,

• and portability
  …map naturally to Europe’s structure. What others see as fragmentation can become an advantage if Europe builds the connective tissue.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

To lead, Europe must operationalize “human-centric” into engineering, procurement, and market formation.

A. Define measurable “rights properties”
Examples of what can be specified and tested:

• revocation of consent is easy and effective (not symbolic),

• export formats are documented and complete (not partial),

• identity and data can migrate across providers,

• decision systems expose meaningful reasons,

• appeals exist, are time-bounded, and actually change outcomes when appropriate,

• dark-pattern constraints are enforced (not merely discouraged).

B. Build reference stacks, not just grants
Many initiatives fund components; leadership is funding deployable packages:

• a “public services” reference stack,

• an “education platform” reference stack,

• an “institutional collaboration” reference stack,
  each with consistent: identity, permissions, audit logs, accessibility, safety controls, and interoperability.

C. Procurement becomes the scaling engine
Europe’s strongest lever is that it can create demand:

• require portability,

• require auditable governance,

• require interoperability,

• require accessibility and safety baselines.

That shifts the market: vendors build to these properties because it’s how they get contracts—then the same properties become export-ready.

D. Fund the unglamorous layer: integration, UX, maintenance
Human-centric infrastructure fails if it remains “noble but clunky.”
Europe should systematically fund:

• productization (onboarding, documentation, default configs),

• interoperability testing,

• security reviews,

• long-term stewardship and maintenance.

E. Prevent failure modes that kill trust
A human-centric agenda collapses if Europe produces:

• slow, unusable tools,

• fragmented and incompatible systems,

• or heavy compliance processes that only incumbents can navigate.

Leadership means lowering the cost of doing the right thing, not raising it.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Murena / /e/OS

• What they do: A privacy-oriented, “de-Googled” mobile OS and devices/services built around it.

• Market: Users and organizations who want a smartphone stack with reduced dependency on mainstream tracking ecosystems.

• Opportunity: Owning the device-default layer where many rights failures begin (telemetry, lock-in, forced ecosystem coupling).

Nextcloud

• What they do: An open-source collaboration and file platform that organizations can run under their own control (self-hosted or trusted providers).

• Market: Public sector, education, regulated enterprises, and sovereignty-minded organizations.

• Opportunity: Becoming the backbone for institutional autonomy—a practical alternative to external platform dependence.

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2) Privacy by default and data minimization

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

Privacy-by-default means the system is designed so that privacy is the baseline state, and deviation from it is explicit, justified, and constrained. Data minimization means the system is designed to function well while collecting and retaining as little sensitive information as possible.

This principle is much broader than “encrypt messages”:

A. Minimize collection

• Do not collect “just in case.”

• Avoid building shadow profiles via inference.

• Default to local processing where feasible.

B. Minimize retention

• Reduce how long sensitive data exists.

• Use strict lifecycle policies: what is stored, why, for how long, and how it is deleted.

• Treat logs as sensitive assets, not harmless exhaust.

C. Minimize exposure

• Limit which services and actors can access data (least privilege).

• Segment systems so a compromise does not expose everything (containment).

• Encrypt in transit and at rest as baseline, but also design keys, access paths, and privileges to be robust.

D. Protect metadata, not only content
Even if messages are encrypted, metadata can reveal:

• relationships,

• routines,

• location patterns,

• institutional affiliations,

• and behavioral signatures.

A next generation privacy stance treats metadata as a first-class threat surface.

E. Reduce the incentive to surveil
The internet’s privacy failures are often not technical; they are economic.
Privacy-by-default implicitly pushes toward models where revenue is not proportional to the scale of tracking—otherwise the system’s incentives continuously fight the principle.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

Europe can become the global center of gravity for privacy infrastructure, not merely privacy branding.

1) Europe can lead the “privacy primitives” layer
There is a coming platform layer made of:

• metadata protection,

• privacy-preserving computation,

• privacy-preserving analytics,

• secure identity with selective disclosure,

• verifiable governance and auditing.

Owning primitives is stronger than owning apps: primitives become dependencies for many ecosystems.

2) Regulated sectors become Europe’s advantage arena
Healthcare, finance, public administration, critical infrastructure:

• have high compliance pressure,

• high breach costs,

• and high willingness to pay for demonstrable safeguards.

Europe can dominate here by making privacy engineering production-grade and auditable.

3) Cross-border collaboration without raw data pooling
Europe’s multi-country structure makes central data pooling politically and legally difficult.
Privacy-preserving computation creates a strategic path: collaborate on insights without centralizing sensitive raw data.
That turns “fragmentation” into an engine for privacy innovation.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Industrialize PETs (privacy-enhancing technologies)
Leadership is not inventing PETs; it’s making them usable:

• developer toolchains,

• performance engineering,

• standard libraries,

• reference architectures,

• benchmarking and security evaluation.

B. Make privacy-preserving analytics the default in public systems
Governments need measurement and optimization. Europe can lead by standardizing:

• aggregation-first metrics,

• strong access governance,

• privacy-preserving approaches when sensitive datasets are involved.

C. Create technical assurance markets
The “trust gap” in privacy is that many claims are unverified.
Europe can lead by growing a practical assurance ecosystem:

• audits that focus on real data flow behavior,

• repeatable test harnesses,

• standardized disclosure about telemetry and retention,

• procurement criteria that reward verifiable privacy properties.

D. Align incentives
Privacy-by-default succeeds when viable models scale:

• subscription and service models,

• institutional contracts,

• managed services built on privacy-respecting components,

• and public funding targeted at long-term maintenance of critical privacy infrastructure.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Nym

• What they do: Network-layer privacy technology focused on protecting metadata (making traffic correlation and linkage harder).

• Market: High-risk users and organizations where metadata exposure is a real threat (journalism, civil society, sensitive communications).

• Opportunity: Owning the metadata privacy layer that most mainstream privacy tools don’t fully address.

Zama

• What they do: Tooling for privacy-preserving computation (notably techniques that allow computation on encrypted data).

• Market: Regulated sectors and data-collaboration settings where raw data sharing is risky or unacceptable (finance, health, sensitive analytics).

• Opportunity: Enabling a European platform category: compute-without-exposure, unlocking collaboration and AI under strict privacy constraints.

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3) Security-by-design and resilience

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

Security-by-design means the internet’s core services are engineered so that failure is contained, compromise is hard, and recovery is routine—not heroic. Resilience means the system continues to function under attack, outage, coercion, or partial collapse.

This principle is not “add security later” or “buy a security product.” It is a way of building systems where security properties emerge from architecture:

A. Secure defaults and least privilege

• The default configuration is safe even if nobody touches it.

• Every component has only the permissions it needs—no broad, permanent access.

• Credentials are short-lived, rotated, and scoped; secrets are treated as high-value assets.

B. Compartmentalization and blast-radius control

• Systems are segmented so that compromise of one service doesn’t expose everything.

• Data is partitioned by sensitivity; identity, billing, analytics, and content are isolated.

• “Assume breach” design: build so attackers cannot move laterally easily.

C. Supply-chain integrity and verifiability
Modern systems are assembled from dependencies. Security-by-design requires:

• dependency management discipline,

• build integrity,

• provenance of artifacts,

• and operational processes that can respond to upstream compromise.

D. Identity and authentication as the security foundation

• Strong authentication and modern credential practices are baseline.

• Identity is not only “login”; it’s authorization, role management, and auditable access.

E. Continuous monitoring with principled boundaries
Resilience requires visibility, but a next-gen internet must avoid turning monitoring into surveillance:

• logging should be purposeful, minimized, and protected,

• observability should not become a hidden data extraction pipeline.

F. Resilience against outages and coercion
Resilience includes:

• redundancy and failover,

• graceful degradation (system remains partially useful),

• backup and recovery as standard operations,

• ability to operate under degraded connectivity,

• and mitigation of single points of failure (technical and governance).

G. Security as a lifecycle discipline
Security-by-design is inseparable from:

• rapid patching,

• safe update mechanisms,

• incident response playbooks,

• and post-incident learning.
  If updates are fragile or rare, the system is not resilient.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

Europe can turn security into a leadership wedge by owning the category “verifiable resilience”—security that is credible, measurable, and suitable for institutions.

1) Europe can become the default supplier for “high-trust environments”
Public services, healthcare, research infrastructure, regulated industry, and critical supply chains increasingly need systems that are:

• demonstrably secure,

• audit-friendly,

• and governable.
  Europe can dominate these segments by making resilience a standard design property rather than an optional service.

2) The EU structure creates a unique resilience advantage
Europe’s distributed institutional landscape can be turned into a resilience asset:

• federated deployments reduce monoculture risk,

• shared standards reduce fragmentation risk,

• multiple operators reduce single-point capture risk.

3) Security becomes an exportable capability
As cyber risk rises worldwide, buyers seek:

• secure-by-default reference designs,

• hardened stacks,

• and assurance frameworks they can trust.
  Europe can export “secure operating models” alongside software components.

4) A sovereignty-relevant advantage without needing to “win consumer apps”
Even if Europe does not win global consumer networks, it can lead in:

• secure identity,

• secure communications,

• secure collaboration,

• secure data exchange,

• and secure cloud-to-edge deployments.
  These are the arteries of the economy.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Standardize “secure-by-default” as a procurement baseline
Define minimal baselines that are objectively testable:

• strong MFA / phishing-resistant auth in sensitive contexts,

• least-privilege access,

• encryption everywhere,

• segmentation and data classification,

• defined incident response and patch SLAs,

• secure update mechanisms.

B. Build EU “hardened reference stacks”
Publish reference architectures that are deployable:

• secure identity + access layer,

• secure collaboration + file exchange,

• secure messaging,

• secure audit logging and governance,

• backup and recovery templates.
  Make these easy to adopt by smaller institutions, not only large ministries.

C. Create a European assurance ecosystem
Leadership requires trust that claims are real:

• security audits,

• reproducible builds where feasible,

• dependency provenance (SBOM-like approaches),

• and standard reporting templates that buyers can interpret.

D. Fund the boring operational layer
Security fails most often in:

• patching discipline,

• key management,

• configuration,

• and human workflows.
  Europe should fund tooling and “operational UX” that makes secure operations easy by default.

E. Reduce the “security tax” for SMEs
Most SMEs cannot run world-class security teams. Europe can lead by funding:

• managed secure deployment patterns,

• shared services and certified providers,

• and security building blocks that are simple to integrate.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Nitrokey

• What they do: Open-source-focused hardware security products (e.g., security keys / authentication hardware) and related security tooling.

• Market: Security-conscious individuals and organizations that want strong authentication and verifiable hardware-oriented security.

• Opportunity: Making strong authentication and key management accessible and auditable—an enabling primitive for secure-by-default systems.

Yubico

• What they do: Hardware-based authentication (security keys) used to implement phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication.

• Market: Enterprises, governments, and organizations prioritizing identity security and account takeover prevention.

• Opportunity: Scaling a simple, high-impact security primitive (strong authentication) that becomes a default requirement in high-trust digital environments.

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4) Open standards and interoperability

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

Interoperability is the condition that prevents the internet from collapsing into incompatible, captive empires. Open standards ensure that:

• multiple vendors can build compatible implementations,

• users can switch providers,

• ecosystems can evolve without permission from a gatekeeper.

This principle is not “open source vs closed source.” It’s broader:

• protocols, data formats, identity systems, and messaging standards must allow substitutability and composability.

A. Interoperability as anti-lock-in architecture
Lock-in is often not contractual—it’s technical:

• your data can’t move,

• your identity can’t be recognized elsewhere,

• your network graph can’t travel,

• your integrations break if you leave.
  Open standards are the technical tool that makes exit possible.

B. Standards create markets; proprietary silos create rents
When a standard exists:

• startups can enter without negotiating with incumbents,

• competition shifts to quality, service, and innovation,

• and the ecosystem grows because more actors can participate.

C. Interoperability must include conformance
A standard is not real unless you can test it.
Interoperability requires:

• test suites,

• reference implementations,

• compatibility events (“plugfests”),

• and ongoing governance of the standard itself.

D. Interoperability is particularly strategic for Europe
Europe’s market is naturally multi-country and multi-institution.
Interoperability reduces the cost of:

• cross-border services,

• shared digital public services,

• pan-European procurement,

• and multi-vendor ecosystems.

Without interoperability, Europe’s fragmentation becomes a permanent disadvantage. With interoperability, fragmentation becomes a distributed innovation engine.

E. Interoperability is also a governance choice
Protocols embed power:

• who can join,

• who sets the rules,

• who can exclude others,

• what is visible and what is private.
  Open standards are a way to embed governance transparency and prevent unilateral control.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

1) Europe can become the global “neutral infrastructure” builder
When standards dominate, the winner is often the actor who:

• builds the best implementations,

• provides the best assurance,

• and offers the best integration services.
  Europe can own this role—especially in trust-critical layers like identity, messaging, and data exchange.

2) Europe can flip its fragmentation into advantage
Interoperability makes it possible for many European providers to compete on services while sharing compatible foundations. That produces:

• competitive diversity,

• resilience,

• and innovation speed.

3) Interoperability is a direct sovereignty lever
If systems interoperate:

• Europe can avoid dependency on a single non-European vendor,

• replace components gradually,

• and keep strategic control over critical layers.

4) Standards enable an SME economy
A standard lowers barriers to entry:

• SMEs can build modules and integrations,

• specialized providers can thrive,

• and the ecosystem becomes less concentrated.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Standards-first procurement
If public procurement requires:

• open APIs,

• documented formats,

• portability,

• interoperability testing,
  …then vendors will implement standards as a condition of market access.

B. Invest in conformance tooling
Europe should fund:

• shared test suites,

• certification programs,

• reference implementations,

• and developer tooling that makes standards easy to adopt.

C. Build “integration as infrastructure”
Interoperability fails when integrations are bespoke and fragile.
Europe can lead by building:

• standardized connectors,

• shared integration frameworks,

• and robust migration tooling.

D. Coordinate governance of standards
Leadership requires credible governance:

• transparent processes,

• multi-stakeholder representation,

• and clear evolution paths so standards don’t stagnate or get captured.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Element (Matrix ecosystem)

• What they do: Provides products and services built on the Matrix open communication protocol (messaging and real-time communication).

• Market: Organizations and communities needing secure, interoperable communication—often public sector and enterprises wanting more control than closed platforms provide.

• Opportunity: Making open, federated communication practical at institutional scale, turning an open protocol into a deployable alternative to proprietary comms stacks.

Mastodon

• What they do: A federated social networking platform built on an open protocol (ActivityPub), enabling many independently run servers to interoperate.

• Market: Communities, institutions, and individuals seeking social networking without single-platform control, and operators who want to host their own instance.

• Opportunity: Demonstrating that open-protocol social can scale as an ecosystem of many operators, creating a model for non-captive social infrastructure.

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5) Decentralization and federation as default market structure

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

Decentralization and federation are about power distribution. The internet stays “an internet” when no single actor can unilaterally control identity, speech, commerce, discovery, or access. Federation is the practical form of this: many independent operators run services that interoperate via shared protocols.

This principle is not ideological. It is an architectural answer to predictable failure modes of centralized platforms: capture, surveillance incentives, censorship pressure, systemic outages, and brittle monocultures.

A. Federation vs. “centralization with many clients”
True federation means:

• multiple independent operators,

• shared protocols and compatibility,

• the ability for users to move between operators (or choose one) without losing the network effect.

If one company runs the only “real” backend, that is not decentralization; it is centralization wearing a different UI.

B. Decentralization is about reducing single points of failure
Single points of failure can be:

• technical (one cloud region, one dependency, one identity provider),

• economic (one platform controls distribution and monetization),

• governance-based (one authority defines rules with no recourse).

A federated system aims to make failure localized and recoverable.

C. Federation requires operator tooling and governance
The hard part is not the protocol; it is:

• onboarding operators,

• moderation tools,

• safety tooling,

• abuse response,

• upgrade management,

• and sustainable operating models.

Without mature operator tooling, federation collapses into either chaos (poor safety) or re-centralization (only big operators survive).

D. The “network effect problem” must be solved structurally
Central platforms win because they capture the social graph. Federation must offer:

• inter-instance identity,

• content portability,

• cross-instance discovery,

• and user experience that doesn’t punish people for choosing smaller operators.

E. Federation must be compatible with law and institutional needs
If federation cannot support:

• lawful governance processes,

• predictable policy enforcement,

• institutional compliance needs,
  it will remain niche. A next-gen approach includes patterns for lawful operation without destroying decentralization.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

Europe is structurally well-suited to federated systems—and that is a real advantage.

1) Federation fits Europe’s multi-country reality
Europe already operates as a collection of sovereign actors that must coordinate. Federated internet systems mirror this structure:

• many operators (countries, municipalities, universities, organizations),

• shared standards,

• interoperability instead of uniform control.

Where a single-country market might default to one dominant platform, Europe can normalize multi-operator ecosystems.

2) Europe can lead “governable decentralization”
Globally, decentralization often gets stuck between:

• “centralized and safe,” or

• “decentralized and messy.”
  Europe can lead by proving a third path: decentralized but governable, with mature tooling and clear operating patterns.

3) Resilience becomes a selling point
Federated infrastructure offers:

• reduced systemic outage risk,

• reduced capture risk,

• reduced dependency on a single vendor’s policy changes.
  In an era of geopolitical and cyber instability, resilience is economic value.

4) New European markets: operators, managed federation, and federation services
Federation creates new categories:

• hosting providers and managed operators,

• certified service providers,

• federation compliance tooling,

• interoperability certification services.
  Europe’s SME ecosystem can thrive here.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Make federation operable, not just possible
Fund and standardize:

• admin dashboards,

• upgrade tooling,

• moderation and safety tools,

• abuse reporting and response workflows,

• federation policy templates,

• operator training and “runbooks.”

B. Solve portability and identity at the ecosystem level
Leadership requires real exit and migration:

• identity portability across operators,

• content and relationship graph portability,

• standard export/import tooling that works in practice.

C. Procurement-driven federation
Create “federation-friendly procurement”:

• public institutions can run their own nodes or choose certified operators,

• requirements for open protocols, portability, and interop testing,

• support for multi-vendor federation deployments.

D. Build “managed federation” as an industry
Not every municipality or university wants to run infrastructure.
Europe can lead by creating:

• certified managed operators,

• shared services models,

• and funding mechanisms that make federation economically sustainable.

E. Treat safety as an architectural layer
A federated internet fails if it becomes unsafe.
Europe should invest heavily in:

• cross-instance moderation tooling,

• shared threat intelligence for abuse,

• reputation and trust signals for operators,

• user-level safety controls that travel across instances.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Nextcloud (not repeated here — already used earlier)

Element (Matrix ecosystem) (not repeated here — already used earlier)

Gotenna

• What they do: Builds mesh networking devices/systems that enable communication when normal infrastructure is unavailable or constrained.

• Market: Defense, public safety, emergency response, and teams operating in low-connectivity or high-resilience environments.

• Opportunity: Making “offline-capable, infrastructure-independent comms” practical—an extreme form of decentralization that becomes valuable in crises and resilience planning.

Peergos

• What they do: Privacy-focused, user-controlled storage and file sharing designed to reduce reliance on centralized cloud storage providers.

• Market: Individuals and organizations seeking strong privacy guarantees and user-controlled storage environments.

• Opportunity: Offering a credible alternative to centralized cloud storage by aligning decentralization with practical storage/sharing use cases.

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6) User-controlled identity and credentials

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

Identity is becoming the gatekeeper of everything: access to services, payments, public benefits, work, education, and reputation. If identity is controlled by platforms, users and institutions become dependent. NGI logic pushes toward user-controlled identity, typically via verifiable credentials and selective disclosure.

This principle is about changing identity from:

• “platform account”
  to

• “portable identity and attestations you control.”

A. Identity should be portable and multi-provider

• People should not have one single identity provider that can exclude them from life.

• Identity should be a layer where multiple providers can exist, and the user can switch.

B. Credentials should be verifiable without central lookup
A next-gen identity layer reduces dependence on “ask the platform” patterns:

• credentials can be verified cryptographically,

• without revealing unnecessary data,

• and without forcing every interaction through a central gatekeeper.

C. Selective disclosure is the core feature
Most real-world identity tasks require only a small fact:

• “over 18,”

• “licensed professional,”

• “enrolled student,”

• “authorized buyer,”
  not the entire identity record.
  Selective disclosure reduces exposure and abuse.

D. Identity must include revocation, recovery, and lifecycle
A real identity system must handle:

• loss of devices,

• credential revocation,

• updates over time,

• delegated authority (guardianship, organizational roles),

• and clear governance over issuers and verifiers.

E. Identity is a trust ecosystem, not a single product
It requires:

• issuers (governments, universities, employers),

• wallets (user software),

• verifiers (services),

• registries and trust frameworks (who is allowed to issue what).

Hidden opportunity for Europe

Identity is one of the biggest “platform layers” of the next decade. Europe has a unique advantage if it can make identity:

• trusted,

• interoperable,

• rights-preserving,

• and usable cross-border.

1) Europe can own the trust rails of regulated life
Education credentials, professional licenses, healthcare eligibility, procurement permissions—these are enormous markets where:

• trust matters more than virality,

• and rights-by-design matters more than growth hacks.

2) Europe can reduce dependency by controlling the identity substrate
If Europe’s identity stack is interoperable and widely adopted, European institutions are less dependent on external platforms for authentication and authorization.

3) Cross-border identity is Europe’s killer use case
Many identity solutions work within one country.
Europe’s natural challenge is cross-border trust.
If Europe solves cross-border identity and credentials, it becomes a global reference model.

4) Identity unlocks safer digital markets
Verifiable credentials can reduce:

• fraud,

• bots and fake accounts in sensitive contexts,

• counterfeit certifications,

• and high-cost verification processes.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Standardize the trust framework
Europe needs common rules for:

• issuer accreditation,

• verifier obligations,

• wallet requirements,

• interoperability testing,

• and liability/assurance expectations.

B. Build reference implementations and make them easy
Leadership means:

• high-quality wallet UX,

• developer tooling for verifiers,

• easy onboarding for issuers,

• templates for common credential types (student status, licenses, roles).

C. Use public services as the adoption engine
Governments can issue credentials at scale:

• IDs, permits, certificates.
  If public services adopt verifiable credentials, the ecosystem becomes real fast.

D. Avoid over-centralization
The system must not become a single new gatekeeper.
Europe should enforce multi-provider ecosystems:

• multiple wallet options,

• multiple verifier implementations,

• multiple certified service providers.

E. Integrate identity into the broader open stack
Identity must plug into:

• access control,

• payments,

• messaging,

• procurement,

• healthcare and education systems,
  to become truly valuable.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

walt.id

• What they do: Builds infrastructure and tooling for verifiable credentials and decentralized identity (issuance, wallets, verification components).

• Market: Enterprises and public sector adopters implementing credential-based identity and verification.

• Opportunity: Becoming a key enabler for practical credential ecosystems by providing implementation tooling rather than only theory.

Signicat

• What they do: Provides digital identity verification and authentication services used by businesses to verify users and meet regulatory requirements.

• Market: Regulated industries (finance, payments, online services) needing high-assurance identity checks and authentication flows.

• Opportunity: Serving as a bridge from traditional identity verification into more modern credential-based ecosystems, reducing friction for enterprise adoption.

IDnow

• What they do: Identity verification solutions (KYC / verification workflows) used by companies to onboard users securely.

• Market: Financial services, fintech, marketplaces, and regulated online platforms.

• Opportunity: Scaling identity assurance in Europe and potentially integrating with verifiable credential models as they mature, reducing verification cost and fraud.

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7) Data portability and personal data stores

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

Data portability is not “download a ZIP once a year.” In NGI terms, portability means your digital life is not trapped inside a provider’s database schema. The user (or their chosen operator) should be able to move data, identity context, and key relationships between services with low friction.

A next generation internet treats data as separable from applications:

• Apps become clients of your data (with permissions).

• Your data becomes a layer you control (directly or through a trusted operator).

What this implies technically and institutionally:

A. Separation of concerns: data layer vs. app layer

• Today’s dominant model bundles: storage + identity + social graph + app logic into one platform.

• NGI portability separates these, so a user can replace an app without losing the underlying data and history.

B. Permissioning becomes a first-class primitive
Portability only works if access is governed cleanly:

• granular permissions (what, why, for how long),

• revocation that actually stops access,

• clear disclosure of what an app did with data,

• and “least privilege by default.”

C. Standardized schemas and data contracts
Exporting data is meaningless if every service uses incompatible formats.
Portability requires:

• shared schemas for common objects (contacts, messages, files, calendars, posts, transactions),

• versioning and evolution paths,

• compatibility tests.

D. Portability of relationships is the hard part
The most valuable lock-in isn’t data; it’s:

• social graphs,

• collaboration contexts,

• reputations and roles,

• institutional memberships.
  A next-gen approach must provide ways to carry these across providers without re-building everything from scratch.

E. Local-first and user-controlled “data vault” patterns
Two common design patterns:

• Personal data stores (a user-held or user-chosen store; apps request access).

• Local-first systems (data resides primarily on user devices and syncs selectively).

Both reduce the platform’s power over the user and reduce breach impact by avoiding large centralized data hoards.

F. Portability must be usable, not theoretical
If portability requires technical expertise, it fails. Real portability means:

• guided migrations,

• predictable “import semantics,”

• verification that the destination is complete,

• and rollback options.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

1) Re-opening markets dominated by incumbents
Portability weakens lock-in, which is the core defense of incumbent platforms. If switching becomes real:

• SMEs can compete on quality and specialization,

• new entrants can win niches without being killed by network dependency,

• and innovation can happen at the edges again.

2) A European “data layer” industry
If Europe builds the infrastructure for user-controlled data (vaults, permissioning, schema standards, migration tooling), it creates an entire value chain:

• providers that host/manage personal data stores,

• integration and migration services,

• compliance-by-design toolkits,

• certified operators for institutions (schools, municipalities, healthcare).

3) Cross-border services become cheaper
Europe’s biggest structural cost is fragmentation. Portability plus interoperability reduces the cost of building services that work across:

• countries,

• institutions,

• vendors,

• and administrative systems.

4) Better privacy with better functionality
Portability and privacy reinforce each other:

• fewer centralized hoards,

• clearer consent and access boundaries,

• and reduced need for “collect everything” business models.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Define “portability that works” as a standard
Europe leads by turning portability into concrete requirements:

• what must be portable (object types, history, metadata),

• how completeness is verified,

• minimal fidelity requirements (no lossy exports),

• and time-bounded migration processes.

B. Fund shared schemas + conformance tooling
Standards without test suites fail. Europe should fund:

• schema repositories,

• compatibility test harnesses,

• reference import/export tooling,

• and versioning governance.

C. Build reference implementations of data vault architectures
Make it easy for:

• startups to build apps that request access,

• institutions to offer citizen/student/user data vaults,

• and operators to host vaults responsibly.

D. Use procurement to force portability into products
Public procurement can require:

• export/import in standard formats,

• documented APIs,

• migration support,

• and contractual commitments to portability.

E. Avoid “new lock-in dressed as portability”
A major failure mode is replacing Big Tech lock-in with a new “data vault monopolist.”
Europe should push multi-provider ecosystems:

• many vault providers,

• portable vault hosting,

• multiple compatible implementations.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Inrupt

• What they do: Builds commercial tooling and services around the Solid approach (personal data pods / user-controlled data access patterns).

• Market: Enterprises and institutions that want user-controlled data architectures without building everything from scratch.

• Opportunity: Becoming a foundational provider for “apps read data by permission” ecosystems.

Cozy Cloud

• What they do: Personal cloud/data platform concepts aimed at giving users a controlled place for their files and personal data, with apps/services connecting to it.

• Market: Consumers and privacy-conscious users; also partnerships where personal data control is valued.

• Opportunity: Making “personal data space” usable and mainstream, not just a research concept.

digi.me

• What they do: User-permissioned personal data access and sharing models—helping individuals collect and share their own data with services under explicit consent.

• Market: Data-driven services that want consented access; individuals who want more control over their data footprint.

• Opportunity: Operationalizing consented data sharing as a practical alternative to tracking-based collection.

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8) Trust through transparency, verifiability, and auditability

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

A next generation internet is trustworthy when claims about behavior can be verified, not merely promised. Transparency here is not “publish a blog post.” It’s the ability to confirm meaningful properties of systems and governance.

This principle spans multiple layers:

A. Verifiable software behavior (not only stated intent)

• You should be able to verify what software is, how it was built, and what it depends on.

• Trust moves from “trust the vendor” to “verify the artifact and the process.”

Key mechanisms include:

• reproducible builds (where feasible),

• signed artifacts and provenance attestations,

• dependency inventories,

• and controlled release processes.

B. Auditability as a normal operational feature
Auditability means:

• actions that matter are logged,

• logs are protected against tampering,

• access to sensitive data is traceable,

• and accountability is technically supported.

This is especially critical for:

• identity and access control,

• public services,

• high-stakes AI-assisted decisions,

• and institutional collaboration.

C. Transparency of governance and power
Even if code is open, governance can be opaque.
A verifiable internet also needs:

• clarity on who can change rules,

• how policy updates happen,

• what appeals exist,

• and how disputes are resolved.

D. “Explainability” at the interface level
Users don’t need internal model weights; they need:

• understandable reasons for consequential outcomes (“why this decision?”),

• traceability of actions (“who accessed what?”),

• and recourse paths (“how do I challenge it?”).

E. Supply-chain trust as a first-class requirement
Modern breaches often enter through dependencies and build pipelines.
Verifiability means reducing the “invisible trust” inside:

• packages,

• libraries,

• CI/CD systems,

• signing keys,

• and update channels.

F. Trust without surveillance
A core NGI tension: observability is necessary, but can become surveillance.
The next-gen approach is:

• minimal logging,

• strict retention,

• access-controlled audit trails,

• and privacy-preserving monitoring where possible.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

1) Europe can dominate “assurance-grade digital infrastructure”
Many global markets increasingly require demonstrable trust:

• government procurement,

• regulated industries,

• critical supply chains.
  Europe can lead by making verifiability standard—turning trust into an exportable feature set.

2) An entire “trust services” economy
Verifiability creates new markets:

• independent audit providers,

• certification services,

• compliance automation tooling,

• secure build and release infrastructure,

• and trusted operator ecosystems.
  This is structurally aligned with Europe’s strength in industrial-grade services and standards.

3) Competitive advantage against manipulation and fraud
As synthetic media and automated fraud scale, buyers and citizens will demand:

• provenance,

• authenticity signals,

• and auditable processes.
  Europe can lead in the infrastructure that makes authenticity cheaper than deception.

4) Strategic autonomy through supply-chain transparency
If Europe can verify its critical digital dependencies, it reduces exposure to:

• hidden telemetry,

• compromised upstream packages,

• and unilateral platform changes.
  This is sovereignty at the operational level.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Mandate verifiability properties in public procurement
Requirements that are concrete and enforceable:

• signed releases and provenance,

• dependency inventories,

• defined patch and disclosure processes,

• audit logging for sensitive operations,

• and clear governance commitments.

B. Fund shared verification infrastructure
Europe should fund the “commons” of trust:

• open-source tooling for provenance and artifact verification,

• standardized audit log patterns,

• reproducible build infrastructure where feasible,

• conformance test suites.

C. Create a practical certification ecosystem
Avoid paper-heavy “checkbox certification.”
Instead build:

• automated conformance checks,

• repeatable audit playbooks,

• and lightweight labels that correspond to real technical guarantees.

D. Make transparency usable for humans
A trustworthy internet requires interfaces that communicate:

• what is happening,

• what changed,

• and what the user can do.
  Europe should invest in UX patterns for transparency and contestability as reusable components.

E. Avoid the “trust tax”
A major failure mode is making verifiability so expensive that only large incumbents can comply.
Europe should subsidize or provide shared infrastructure so SMEs can meet trust requirements without prohibitive cost.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

TrustInSoft

• What they do: Formal-analysis/static verification tooling for software (especially safety/security-critical codebases).

• Market: Industries and teams building high-assurance software (embedded, industrial, critical systems).

• Opportunity: Turning “provable properties” into a practical engineering workflow—core to verifiable infrastructure.

Systerel

• What they do: Engineering and verification services/tools using formal methods for safety/security-critical systems.

• Market: Critical infrastructure, transport, defense-adjacent systems, and regulated domains needing assurance.

• Opportunity: Scaling “assurance engineering” as a European strength—making verifiability an industrial capability.

GitGuardian

• What they do: Detects leaked secrets and sensitive credentials in code and developer workflows (reducing a major real-world failure mode in software supply chains).

• Market: Enterprises and development teams that need to reduce credential leakage risk across repositories and CI/CD pipelines.

• Opportunity: Making supply-chain hygiene operational and continuous—an enabling layer for trustworthy software delivery.

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9) Open-source as a public good and “digital commons” economics

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

The NGI view treats key internet building blocks as shared infrastructure, not proprietary chokepoints. “Open source as a public good” means: when society funds core capabilities (directly or indirectly), the outputs should strengthen a commons that anyone can audit, reuse, improve, and build services on top of.

This principle is not “everything must be free.” It is about where the strategic control points live:

• If core primitives are proprietary, the economy becomes dependent on a small set of owners.

• If core primitives are open and governable, the economy becomes an ecosystem where many actors can create value.

What it implies in practice:

A. The internet has “infrastructure layers” that should behave like roads
Certain components are so foundational that proprietary capture creates systemic risk:

• identity and authentication primitives,

• secure communication protocols,

• core cryptographic libraries,

• secure storage and synchronization layers,

• audit logging patterns,

• interoperability tooling,

• core libraries that underpin critical services.

Treating these as commons reduces:

• duplication across countries and institutions,

• security risk from opaque dependencies,

• and innovation bottlenecks created by gatekeepers.

B. “Public money → public code” is only the beginning
Open code is not automatically a public good. For it to be a commons, you need:

• maintenance funding and stewardship,

• governance (who decides changes),

• security review processes,

• documentation and onboarding,

• release engineering and compatibility guarantees.

A neglected open-source project is not a reliable public good; it’s a risk.

C. Digital commons are an industrial strategy
The true value is leverage:

• One strong common component can enable hundreds of products.

• Shared primitives reduce cost to build new services.

• The commons becomes a platform where SMEs can compete without needing monopoly-scale capital.

D. Sustainability is the core design constraint
Digital commons fail when they rely on volunteer burnout. A next-gen approach explicitly supports:

• long-term maintainers,

• stable funding streams,

• service ecosystems around open components (hosting, support, integration, certification),

• and procurement models that pay for upkeep.

E. Commons are also a security strategy
Open code is not automatically secure, but it enables:

• independent review,

• faster detection of vulnerabilities,

• reproducible builds and verifiable supply chains (when done properly),

• and less hidden telemetry risk.

The security advantage only materializes when Europe invests in the operational discipline around the commons.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

This is one of Europe’s biggest “structural wins” if executed properly.

1) Europe can create a continental acceleration layer for SMEs
Europe has many capable SMEs that often can’t compete with platform giants on distribution or capital.
If Europe builds and maintains strong commons:

• SMEs can build differentiated services quickly,

• compete on integration and domain expertise,

• and sell into a large internal market shaped by procurement.

2) Europe can reduce dependency without requiring total self-sufficiency
Strategic autonomy does not mean “build everything alone.”
It means: ensure critical layers are:

• inspectable,

• replaceable,

• and governable.
  Digital commons make replacement and evolution realistic.

3) Europe can export “open infrastructure packages”
Once commons are assembled into coherent stacks (identity + storage + collaboration + audit + security baseline), Europe can export:

• deployable architectures,

• operating models,

• and certification frameworks,
  especially attractive to countries and institutions seeking alternatives to gatekeeper platforms.

4) Europe can turn standards + open implementations into global influence
The strongest form of “norm-setting” is shipping:

• widely adopted open implementations,

• that embody Europe’s values and requirements.
  That becomes de facto global infrastructure.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Fund maintainership as first-class infrastructure
Europe should treat maintainers like critical infrastructure operators:

• multi-year funding,

• security review budgets,

• release engineering support,

• and governance support.

B. Build “commons-to-market” pathways
A recurring failure mode is: open components exist, but nobody packages them into deployable products.
Europe can lead by funding:

• reference deployments,

• integration layers,

• long-term support distributions,

• and migration tooling for institutions.

C. Procurement should explicitly pay for the commons
If public institutions use open components, procurement should include:

• maintenance contributions,

• support contracts from European service providers,

• and funding for security audits and patch pipelines.

D. Create a European assurance label for “infrastructure-grade open source”
Not paperwork—practical requirements like:

• documented threat models,

• secure release processes,

• vulnerability disclosure norms,

• and compatibility guarantees.
  This makes open components safe to adopt at scale.

E. Prevent capture of the commons
Europe must avoid replacing Big Tech capture with “a single European vendor capture.”
Design for:

• multi-provider service ecosystems,

• open governance,

• and modular substitutability.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Aiven

• What they do: Managed cloud services built around popular open-source data infrastructure (databases, streaming, etc.)—they operate and support open components as reliable services.

• Market: Companies that want the power of open-source data systems without running them in-house.

• Opportunity: Turning the commons into a scalable European services industry: “open infrastructure, enterprise reliability.”

Collabora

• What they do: Enterprise-grade products and support around open productivity/collaboration software (e.g., document editing/collaboration built on open-source foundations).

• Market: Public sector and organizations that need collaboration tooling with strong control and customizability.

• Opportunity: Proving that open-source can be delivered with the polish, support, and procurement compatibility institutions require.

Gitpod

• What they do: Cloud development environments that make software development reproducible and standardized (developer workspaces that spin up consistently).

• Market: Engineering teams that want faster onboarding and consistent dev setups across distributed teams.

• Opportunity: Strengthening the “developer productivity layer” around open ecosystems—making it easier for European builders to ship and maintain software at scale.

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10) Inclusion and accessibility as first-class system requirements

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

A next generation internet is not “next gen” if it’s only usable by the privileged, the healthy, the always-connected, and the technically confident. Inclusion and accessibility are not UI polishing—they are system-level requirements that determine who can participate in society.

This principle has several layers:

A. Accessibility is multi-dimensional
It includes:

• visual accessibility (screen readers, contrast, structure),

• hearing accessibility (captions, transcripts),

• motor accessibility (keyboard navigation, assistive input),

• cognitive accessibility (clarity, predictability, reduced overload),

• language accessibility (plain language, multilingual support),

• connectivity accessibility (low bandwidth, offline/edge-tolerant design).

If the system assumes fast internet, perfect eyesight, perfect attention, and modern devices, it excludes.

B. “Accessible by design” is cheaper than retrofitting
Retrofitting accessibility is expensive and often incomplete.
NGI-style thinking makes accessibility part of:

• component libraries,

• design systems,

• procurement requirements,

• QA/testing,

• and continuous delivery pipelines.

C. Inclusion is also about power and participation
A human-centric internet must ensure that:

• public services are usable by everyone,

• critical information is accessible,

• and participation does not require surrendering privacy or dignity.

Inclusion intersects with rights:

• if you must accept tracking or coercive UI to access essential services, that’s structural exclusion.

D. The hidden technical core: interoperability + accessibility
Accessibility often breaks when ecosystems are fragmented.
If Europe builds interoperable building blocks with baked-in accessibility patterns, it creates:

• higher baseline quality across many providers,

• and reduces the “accessibility tax” for SMEs.

E. Accessibility is a resilience property
In crises—disasters, cyber incidents, infrastructure outages—systems must degrade gracefully and remain usable:

• low-bandwidth modes,

• simple workflows,

• multi-channel access,

• and clear, stable interfaces.
  Accessible design often directly improves resilience for everyone.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

1) Europe can lead in “universal digital infrastructure”
Europe can make accessibility a hallmark of “EU-grade” systems:

• public services that work for everyone,

• education platforms that include diverse learners,

• workforce tools that don’t exclude people with disabilities.

That becomes both a moral advantage and a market differentiator, especially for institutional buyers.

2) Inclusion unlocks a massive productivity dividend
Accessibility is not charity; it’s economic:

• fewer people blocked from work and services,

• reduced support costs,

• improved completion rates for digital services,

• and improved outcomes in education and healthcare.

Europe can measure and monetize this in public value and economic competitiveness.

3) Europe can build an “accessibility tooling ecosystem”
Just like security became a tooling category, accessibility can too:

• automated testing,

• design-system components,

• compliance workflows,

• and content transformation (captions, summaries, plain-language conversions).

This is fertile ground for startups because it’s operational pain with clear budgets.

4) Europe can export inclusive-by-default reference designs
Many regions struggle with accessible public services.
If Europe ships reference architectures and design systems that embed accessibility, that becomes exportable expertise—especially as more governments digitize.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Make accessibility non-negotiable in procurement
Require:

• accessibility compliance testing,

• usability testing with assistive tech,

• documented accessibility features,

• and ongoing monitoring (not one-time compliance).

B. Provide shared accessible component libraries
Europe should fund reusable building blocks:

• UI components with accessibility baked in,

• multilingual content frameworks,

• captioning/transcript workflows for public content,

• low-bandwidth “lite” modes for essential services.

C. Build “accessibility pipelines” into CI/CD
Accessibility should be part of continuous delivery:

• automated tests (structure, contrast, keyboard navigation),

• content checks (plain language),

• regression detection so accessibility doesn’t degrade silently.

D. Reduce the cost for SMEs
If accessibility is expensive, only incumbents comply.
Europe should subsidize:

• tooling,

• audits,

• and shared services (captioning, testing frameworks),
  so SMEs can meet requirements without disproportionate burden.

E. Treat inclusion as a measurable outcome
Track:

• task completion rates across diverse user groups,

• accessibility defect rates over time,

• support ticket reductions,

• and public-service adoption improvements.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Texthelp

• What they do: Assistive and literacy-support software (reading/writing support, accessibility tooling for education and workplace).

• Market: Schools, universities, employers, and individuals needing accessibility and productivity support.

• Opportunity: Making cognitive accessibility and literacy support mainstream infrastructure, not a niche accommodation.

ReadSpeaker

• What they do: Text-to-speech and voice technologies used to make digital content accessible via audio.

• Market: Public sector websites, education, enterprises publishing content to broad audiences.

• Opportunity: Scaling “content-to-accessibility” infrastructure—turning any text-heavy service into something more universally usable.

Tobii Dynavox

• What they do: Assistive communication technology enabling people with disabilities to communicate and use digital systems (AAC and related tools).

• Market: Healthcare, education, rehabilitation services, and users needing assistive communication.

• Opportunity: Building the deepest layer of inclusion: enabling participation for people who are otherwise structurally excluded from digital life.

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11) Sustainability and “green internet” constraints

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

A next generation internet must treat sustainability as an engineering constraint, not a corporate social responsibility add-on. Digital systems are physical systems: they consume energy, require hardware, create e-waste, and shape supply chains. “Green internet” in NGI terms means: design infrastructure so that the default path is efficient, long-lived, and materially responsible.

This principle has several technical and systemic layers:

A. Energy is a design variable, not an externality
Most systems are optimized for speed, growth, and engagement; energy use becomes a hidden consequence. A sustainability-first internet treats energy similarly to latency:

• measure it,

• design for it,

• and make it visible in engineering decisions.

That implies:

• efficiency budgets for services (per request, per user, per model inference),

• architectures that avoid wasteful compute,

• and default configurations that minimize unnecessary background activity.

B. Hardware longevity is part of internet design
A huge part of digital footprint is not electricity; it’s manufacturing and replacement cycles. A green internet pushes:

• longer device lifetimes (support windows, repairability),

• software that runs well on older hardware,

• and “de-bloating” patterns (no forced heavy clients for basic functions).

If essential services require constant hardware upgrades, sustainability fails by design.

C. “Sustainable by default” requires procurement and standards
Sustainability cannot be achieved purely through individual choice because the market defaults favor short product cycles. A next-gen approach includes:

• procurement requirements for repairability and long support windows,

• standard metrics for energy use and lifecycle impact,

• and public-sector adoption of low-footprint stacks that become reference practices.

D. Efficiency and resilience often align
Low-footprint architectures tend to be:

• simpler,

• less dependency-heavy,

• and more tolerant of degraded connectivity.
  That makes them good for resilience. In practice:

• edge-first and local-first patterns reduce constant cloud chatter,

• caching and sync strategies reduce traffic and energy,

• federated deployments can reduce concentration of enormous centralized compute.

E. Sustainability is partly an “incentive design” problem
A major driver of waste is business models that reward:

• infinite engagement,

• infinite tracking,

• and infinite feature expansion.
  A sustainable internet favors incentives aligned with:

• user value per compute,

• longevity,

• and modular upgrades rather than full replacement.

F. “Green” includes security and maintainability
A system that is constantly patched in emergencies, frequently rebuilt, and repeatedly replaced is wasteful. Sustainable design includes:

• maintainability (clean architecture, stable interfaces),

• predictable upgrade paths,

• and long-term stewardship of core components (especially open infrastructure).

Hidden opportunity for Europe

1) Europe can lead the “durable digital infrastructure” category
Europe already has cultural and industrial strengths around quality, durability, safety standards, and lifecycle thinking. The internet needs that mindset. Europe can make “EU-grade” mean:

• efficient,

• long-supported,

• repair-friendly,

• and institution-ready.

2) A massive internal market lever: public procurement
Public sectors buy devices, systems, hosting, and services at scale. If Europe uses procurement to require:

• energy measurement and reporting,

• longer support windows,

• compatibility with older hardware,

• and lifecycle responsibility,
  it creates a predictable market where European suppliers can scale.

3) Sustainability becomes a competitiveness wedge
Energy costs, supply constraints, and instability make efficiency economically valuable. Europe can win by building systems that deliver comparable outcomes at lower compute and lower replacement frequency—especially attractive to:

• municipalities,

• schools,

• hospitals,

• SMEs.

4) New industry segments appear
A sustainability-first internet creates demand for:

• energy-aware software tooling,

• green hosting and low-footprint architectures,

• device longevity ecosystems (repair + secure updates),

• and lifecycle analytics for digital systems.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Establish measurable sustainability baselines for digital services
Define common metrics and reporting:

• energy per transaction,

• storage/transfer intensity,

• background activity budgets,

• and lifecycle impact statements for major deployments.

Make these metrics procurement-visible, so efficiency becomes a buying criterion.

B. Build “long-support reference stacks”
Publish and support reference stacks that:

• run well on modest hardware,

• have long-term security update paths,

• avoid unnecessary dependencies,

• and provide low-bandwidth operation modes.

This matters enormously for education and municipal services.

C. Make device longevity a strategic requirement
Encourage policies and procurement that require:

• repairability,

• modularity where feasible,

• guaranteed update windows,

• and easy re-provisioning for institutional fleets.

D. Fund efficiency engineering as infrastructure
Europe should support:

• profiling tools,

• performance/efficiency optimization work,

• and “lean-by-default” component libraries.
  Most teams don’t have time to optimize for energy unless it’s rewarded.

E. Align incentives
Encourage business and governance patterns where success is measured by:

• outcomes per resource,

• user value per compute,

• and stability over time—not only growth curves.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Fairphone

• What they do: Builds smartphones designed around repairability and longer life cycles.

• Market: Consumers and organizations that want more sustainable device procurement.

• Opportunity: Making device longevity and repair ecosystems mainstream, reducing replacement cycles that drive digital footprint.

Back Market

• What they do: Marketplace focused on refurbished electronics, extending device lifetimes.

• Market: Consumers and enterprises looking for lower-cost, lower-impact hardware procurement.

• Opportunity: Normalizing refurbished devices as a default procurement option, scaling circular hardware economics.

Ecosia

• What they do: Search product positioned around funding environmental impact through its business model.

• Market: Consumers and organizations wanting a simple “switch” toward sustainability-aligned digital services.

• Opportunity: Proving that sustainability positioning can be a distribution wedge in mainstream consumer internet choices.

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12) Trustworthy AI with human oversight at the infrastructure layer

Fundamental principle (in full depth)

AI is becoming part of the internet’s substrate: search, ranking, moderation, customer service, personalization, decision support, and automation. A next generation internet must ensure AI is accountable, contestable, and governable—so it strengthens society rather than quietly rewriting power dynamics.

“Trustworthy AI with human oversight” is not “AI that is nice.” It’s AI that can be:

• constrained,

• inspected,

• audited,

• and corrected.

Key components:

A. Clear responsibility and decision boundaries
The fundamental question is: who is responsible when AI causes harm or denies access?
A trustworthy AI internet requires:

• explicit ownership of AI systems,

• explicit policies for what AI can decide,

• and explicit escalation routes to human authority.

If responsibility is ambiguous, the system becomes ungovernable.

B. Contestability as a core primitive
In a next-gen internet, AI outputs that affect people’s rights or opportunities must be challengeable:

• users can request review,

• receive meaningful explanations of the decision basis (at an appropriate level),

• and obtain correction when the system is wrong.

This mirrors “due process,” but applied to AI-mediated actions.

C. Transparency of data flows and objectives
AI systems encode objectives—sometimes implicitly (engagement maximization, cost minimization). A trustworthy approach requires:

• clarity on what the system is optimizing,

• clarity on what data it uses,

• and clarity on what it retains or shares.

This is crucial because AI often turns small data signals into large inferences.

D. Evaluation and monitoring as continuous operations
Trustworthy AI is not a one-time audit; behavior changes with:

• data drift,

• model updates,

• policy changes,

• and adversarial pressure.
  So the infrastructure needs:

• continuous evaluation (quality, safety, bias, robustness),

• monitoring for failures and abuse patterns,

• and release management that prevents silent regressions.

E. Provenance and authenticity in an AI-shaped internet
As synthetic content scales, the internet must provide:

• authenticity signals,

• provenance metadata,

• and verification workflows.
  Otherwise, trust collapses at the informational layer: people cannot tell what is real, who said it, or whether it was manipulated.

F. Privacy-preserving AI as default
AI can become surveillance by another name if it relies on mass collection. Trustworthy AI aligns with:

• data minimization,

• privacy-preserving computation,

• and architectures that avoid centralizing sensitive data unnecessarily.

G. Human oversight that is real (not ceremonial)
“Human-in-the-loop” is often fake if the human cannot:

• understand the situation,

• access the relevant evidence,

• override the system,

• and change future behavior.
  Real oversight requires:

• good interfaces,

• clear authority,

• and operational capacity.

Hidden opportunity for Europe

1) Europe can lead in “governable AI infrastructure”
Many regions will ship AI fast. Europe can win by shipping AI that institutions can justify:

• public sector,

• healthcare,

• education,

• regulated industry,

• high-stakes enterprise workflows.

These buyers value auditability and accountability more than novelty.

2) Europe can make “trustworthy AI” the premium segment
Just as “secure-by-default” becomes a purchase criterion, “auditable-by-default AI” can become a market category where Europe is the reference supplier.

3) Europe can export AI governance toolchains
The biggest market might not be only models, but:

• evaluation systems,

• audit and reporting tooling,

• policy enforcement layers,

• and provenance/authenticity infrastructure.
  Those become dependencies for global deployments as regulation tightens.

4) Europe can reduce systemic harm while increasing adoption
If AI is perceived as unaccountable or manipulative, adoption slows and backlash grows. Europe can accelerate adoption by making AI safer and governable—turning “trust” into deployment speed.

How Europe becomes the leader (concrete execution logic)

A. Standardize “AI oversight primitives”
Define infrastructure expectations:

• logging and traceability for high-stakes outputs,

• documented objective functions and constraints,

• human override mechanisms,

• clear escalation and appeals pathways,

• and mandatory evaluation baselines before deployment.

B. Build reference architectures for AI in public-interest domains
Produce deployable blueprints for:

• AI-assisted public services,

• education support systems,

• health analytics,

• and institutional knowledge assistants,
  including governance layers: access control, audit trails, evaluation harnesses, and privacy constraints.

C. Make provenance and authenticity a core layer
Fund and standardize:

• content authenticity markers,

• provenance pipelines for institutions,

• and verification workflows that can be used by media, government, and platforms.

D. Create a European evaluation and assurance ecosystem
Treat evaluation like cybersecurity:

• continuous testing,

• third-party audits,

• standardized reporting,

• and shared threat intelligence about failures and abuse patterns.

E. Avoid the “compliance-only” trap
Europe must ensure governance tooling is not only paperwork. The differentiator is:

• automation,

• usable oversight interfaces,

• and real operational processes that institutions can run.

Examples of startups/companies (brief: what they do, market, opportunity)

Hugging Face

• What they do: Platform and tooling for building, sharing, and deploying AI models and datasets, plus ecosystem infrastructure for ML development.

• Market: AI builders, enterprises, researchers, and developers needing model/tooling infrastructure.

• Opportunity: Becoming a distribution and governance-adjacent layer where evaluation, documentation, and responsible deployment tooling can be standardized.

Synthesia

• What they do: AI-generated video creation for enterprise communication and training.

• Market: Enterprises producing training, internal comms, and marketing content at scale.

• Opportunity: A front-line case for provenance and authenticity norms—enterprise synthetic media pushes the need for clear “what is generated” governance.

Tractable

• What they do: Computer vision AI used for insurance claims assessment (damage estimation) and related workflows.

• Market: Insurance and automotive ecosystem stakeholders seeking faster, more consistent claims processing.

• Opportunity: Demonstrating “high-stakes AI” where auditability, contestability, and oversight are essential—exactly the environment where Europe can set the gold standard for governable deployment.