EuroDIG 2019 is coming up on the 19th and 20th of June, and will take place this time in The Hague. Both Michael Rotert, eco’s Honorary President, and Lars Steffen, Director of eco international and Project Manager of Blockchain & Domains, will be representing eco at this important European event.
In a brief interview, Lars Steffens explains eco’s reasons for attending EuroDIG.
EuroDIG is a European multi-stakeholder platform to exchange views about Internet governance. What do you expect to be the priority topics at this year´s event?
When you take a look at this year’s agenda of EuroDIG, the range of important topics is as broad as every year. From my perspective, AI, IoT, GDPR, and the safety, resilience & future of the open Internet in the light of fragmentation are focus areas which will be addressed and discussed in several sessions from different angles. Taking a look at our own agenda at eco, there is a clear and large overlap with what we are currently working on.
What contribution will the eco Association – and you in particular – be making to this year’s dialogue?
Like in the years before, eco is sponsoring the EuroDIG in order to support the multi-stakeholder dialogue in Europe. Michael Rotert, Honorary President of the eco Association, is a long-term participant and supporter of EuroDIG and a well-known expert on Internet Governance. He will attend several sessions to participate in roundtable discussions and represent Europe’s largest Internet Association.
Personally, in my role as Community Outreach Co-Coordinator of the Universal Acceptance Steering Group (uasg.tech) at ICANN, I will actively participate in the roundtable discussion “Encouraging a multilingual Internet”, which is organized by the Dynamic Coalition on DNS Issues (DC-DNSI) to build support for the universal acceptance of Domain Names and internationalized Domain Names. We will focus on encouraging UA readiness within the public-sector and will also focus on the end-user experience and how prescriptive government policies, or lack of awareness of UA-readiness, prevents access to several thriving digital economies around the globe.
 The messages from the EuroDIG feed into the global Internet Governance Forum. What do you hope to see as being the main “take-aways” from the European dialogue?
The Internet Governance Forum 2019 in Berlin will focus on three major themes: Data Governance; Digital Inclusion; and Safety, Security, Stability & Resilience. Against this background, the EuroDIG agenda is well positioned to produce valuable take-aways from the European multi-stakeholder community that are completely in step with the major themes at the IGF, allowing a seamless preparation and flow into these discussions. This will increase the potential in November to achieve tangible output for the multi-stakeholder community at the global level.
