The Council of Europe has participated in the 2026 European Dialogue on internet governance (EuroDIG), an open, multi-stakeholder platform for exchanging views on regulating and governing the digital world. The event took place on 26 and 27 May in Brussels.
Under the New Democratic Pact for Europe, the Council of Europe participated in a debate on the intersection of technology with democracy alongside other stakeholders including governments, business, civil society, academia, the technical community. This is part of the year-long consultation of the pact, in which the Council of Europe is gathering inputs on addressing democratic backsliding and honing its expertise, including on transversal digital-governance issues. These issues range from AI to data protection, media and information society, cybercrime, combatting discrimination and online gender violence, digitalisation of justice and digital education of legal professionals, to internet governance and the role of youth.
From disinformation to information bubbles, democracy at risk
Representing the Council of Europe at the opening session, the director of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities, Claudia Luciani, stressed an important point standing out of the consultation under the New Democratic Pact: that democratic safeguards are critical for progress towards the integrity and functioning of the European digital public sphere. She highlighted that the pact places digital governance at the heart of efforts to strengthen democracy, underscoring the need for coordinated action across institutions to address the growing influence of digital technologies on democratic processes. In her intervention, she illustrated how the Council of Europe is developing safeguards to help keeping the internet free and safe in a context where democracy is increasingly mediated by digital information ecosystems and exposed to the risks brought by disinformation, information bubbles and foreign information manipulation and interference campaigns that undermine democratic processes. During the session, the Council of Europe shared a survey with EuroDIG participants to gather inputs on balancing internet freedom and safeguards.
The Council of Europe also co-organised a debate under the theme Trustworthy AI in public services: transparency, accountability, and crisis-resilient communication, which was aimed at exploring how to ensure, based on the existing European legal framework, that public services integrating automated decision-making and AI in their operations use systems that are transparent, explainable and that there is accountability for breaches of legal standards.
Empower digital users as active citizens
Another debate co-organised on Platforms' accountability to strengthen the digital public sphere addressed the immense power that digital platforms hold over public debate, and how their engagement-driven designs - amplified by generative AI and synthetic media - often reduce users to passive consumers of algorithmically curated content, fuelling disinformation, hate speech, and other harms. Drawing on legal frameworks, participants in this session explored how to reshape platform governance to empower users as active citizens rather than mere audiences.
Moreover, the Council of Europe's European Commission for the efficiency of justice (CEPEJ) and the Council of Europe's Human rights education for legal professionals programme (HELP) organised a session to discuss how the increasing use of AI in the justice system is affecting the training needs of legal professionals, and what new approaches and methodologies are needed for judicial training.
EuroDIG 2026 was hosted by the .eu domain name registry, EURid, and supported by the European Commission. It was held under the theme "European voices for the future of the internet - celebrating 20 years of .eu and the beginning of a new internet governance era".
In 2025, the Council of Europe hosted the EuroDIG in its headquarters in Strasbourg. It has supported its multistakeholder discussions since its launch in 2008.
The Council of Europe's work for a better online world
