Technological Sovereignty

We will introduce legislation that enshrines a right to open and uncensored Internet.

To provide more universal access to the Internet, the legislation will attach responsibilities for EU member-states to develop and expand digital infrastructure.

To ensure that all people have the capabilities to navigate the Internet, we will revive the EU’s “Lifelong Learning Program” to help build digital literacy and digital capacity across Europe.

The EU’s “Horizon Europe” invests billions of Euros each year in research and innovation. But European citizens have no say over the direction of these funds and even less control of the products and patents that they yield.

We will democratise Horizon Europe, mandating

1. citizen participation – rather thanconsultation – in defining the mission and destination of EU innovation funding
2. more resources dedicated to grassroots, social, and cooperative-based projects
3. mandatory collective ownership rights for the products of public investment.

European Spring believes that public money should deliver public knowledge, public ownership, and common wealth.

The same principle applies for the development of artificial intelligence. The EU must invest in open AI to promote machine-learning and technological progress in Europe.

And all ethical issues stemming from the rise of Artificial Intelligence should be settled democratically and debated at the European level.

We will work toward mandatory open standards for online platforms.

These standards will allow all users to interact with social media platforms without giving away their data, and they will allow users to switch platforms without losing all the data that they have stored.

By allowing users to migrate off of these platforms, we will reduce the monopoly control of large tech platforms and encourage new digital ventures, both public and private.

Corporate control of patents and copyrights limits innovation and prevents free expression. We will build the digital commons by restricting the power of copyright.

We propose to

1. require that all code developed with public money remains in the public domain
2. expand the “Fair Use” clause in all Copyright law
3. reverse the burden of proof in copyright so that, unless something is shown to be protected by copyright, it remains in the digital commons
4. review the EU Copyright Directive to rebalance the rights of users, creators, and innovators.

We believe that all people are entitled to cyber security rights that protect them from state surveillance and private data trading. We believe that citizens have a right to know who collects data about them, for which purposes, and using which algorithms.

1. We demand that all digital products have privacy as their default setting.
2. We will restrict the sale and access of users’ data to third parties that do not have explicit consent.
3. We will give all citizens the right to know when they are interacting with an algorithm.
4. We will enshrine the right to equal treatment, ensuring that citizens do not face discrimination — racial, ethnic, or otherwise — on the basis of digital algorithms.

Public authorities must retire pre-digital practices that prevented the public from overseeing their work. We are calling for the introduction of free and open-source software at all levels of public administration and publicly funded institutions.

And we are calling for all records that are available to the public to be digitized and published in an open online database.

Technology can and should be a vehicle for transparency.

The current structure of the Internet is far too centralized. Much of the “cloud” that stores and manages our data is privately owned and perfectly structured for government surveillance.

We propose a new European Autonomous Data Network (EADN): a decentralised, anonymous,and encrypted network of devices that protects our data and prevents surveillance.

All public services should be based on the EADN, and all citizens should be granted a Citizen Digital Identity that allows them to access government websites and participate in public forums — verified but anonymous.