The following are the outputs of the real-time captioning taken during the Tenth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in João Pessoa, Brazil, from 10 to 13 November 2015. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the event, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much for being here with us. This is an open forum of the EBU as you know. One of the main activity EBU does in the Internet governance is to support and to participate with EuroDIG, we decide to dedicate this open forum this year to EuroDIG and we do in partnership with EuroDIG represented at my right.
I think the easiest thing is to start and go directly on the point because we don't have so much time.
So you can see the map of the IGF, the national IGF and the EuroDIG initiative. So this is the picture of where we are in Europe now. And the purpose of this open forum is to discuss how we can improve and where we go from now on in order to improve the old process.
Thank you and I give the floor to Sandra.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you very much for giving the EBU open forum for dedicating it to the EuroDIG. Very much appreciated. I think this is the right form to have a discussion among European stakeholders.
I go straight to the point because we only have one hour and we hope we get some action items out of the session today. So we not only want to discuss, we want to have some guidance from you how to proceed in the future.
So the current situation is that the concentration of national IGF is in Europe. You can see this on the map already.
Although according to the UNIGF rules, and this is just copy pasted from the Web site of the IGF, not all of the European government initiatives are recognized by the IGF as such. This is for various reasons. Here you can see the comparison. There are 18 initiatives recognized by UN IGF in 2015. They change this every year because somebody does not submit a report so they will not be listed on this year.
At EuroDIG we have a slightly different approach. We do list or we actually have a map, the first slide. We map all the initiatives even if they are not working according to pure multistakeholders pool but even if there a is a discussion on government owners we'd like to coordinate.
For example, Sweden, there are two strong initiatives going on but none of these initiatives is recognized by the global IGF as IGF. This is for various reasons because they do not submit the report probably. They have a registration fee. They are not purely multistakeholder but still they are very longstanding and valuable initiatives. So this is a different approach because we are not the UN. We are flexible. We can recognize them as well.
Same for France. They are not listed, I guess, just because they didn't submit their report in time.
Also Bosnia and Herzegovina has a very new initiative. They are maybe not listed yet. I think there are various reasons like we have four or six more initiatives on our website of which we are collaborating and then UN IGF has.
So one of the possible questions we would like to discuss and I will hand over to Jacques soon to take the moderation on this one.
We would like to discuss very quickly with your 50 minutes maybe do we need common rule to define national IGF. Do we need this in Europe or do we proceed the way it is right now? And also do we need common goals and does this need to include global IGF goal in each national agenda. Yesterday there was a discussion already started in this respect. So those who were participating in this session or who were organizing it, Lianna can actually contribute so we can start with that.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
You see the slide with the questions.
We have to identify which could be the possible rules if we want to have this. And among the minimum requirement that been identified, these are the three main ones, publically coordinators and participants, public Web site and diversity of stakeholder.
This something that you think is relevant or we have to continue as we are doing today and we continue to not be bound to these rules. We would like to have your opinion on that.
Who wants to start?
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: So I have the open mic here and I will hand that you to if you raise your hand.
>> MODERATOR: You are one of the regular.
>> ELISE LINDBERG: Yes. Thank you.
Elise Lindberg from Norway, from the government. We have a national IGF.
And we're listed by red, by the way. We're not following the rules. So that's one comment according to rules.
I think it's useful to have a frame around what we call IGF. In this inter‑government debate and multistakeholder. I think what you put up is very light and could work, but I would just underline that we need to be very flexible because the most important thing is to get the debate. Why? To get it known. In each nation we struggle a bit with having this outside, say, the usual crowd. And I would guess all of the countries do that. So I think we need to be flexible and to recognize as you do when you listed also Sweden is very good initiative, very broad, something many of us participate in. So if those are not defined as IGF, national IGF initiatives it would be totally wrong. But multistakeholder is important. I think it should be, of course, publically available. Probably could be something about the cost, I don't know. Should be also available for people who can't pay. But still it's important to be very flexible.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: What you say is very important because the need for common rules I think is important. And especially because the rules that are listed are rules about transparency, possibility to participate in accountability of the process that I think is relevant. If this process are not accountable, not transparent, will be very difficult to handle it.
>> PATRICK PENNINKCX: Yes. I'm Patrick Penninkcx from the Council of Europe. I think there is indeed a need to have some common standards. The accountability transparency that you just mentioned are crucial. Of course, you should have a leeway for national discussion. Partners are not the same in every country. But for us as Council of Europe we've been supporting the setting up of some of the IGFs, namely in Ukraine. We are also setting up the IGF in Moldova, Azerbaijaan, Armenia. So mainly countries of eastern Europe. Not always top priorities of decision makers of those countries but we try to do that. We support it and then our colleague from Bosnia may say something about that. We supported the Bosnia IGF setup. We are also supporting the CDIG. So I think it's quite important for us to be able to say, well, why are we doing this and to which extent do these IGFs respond to certain criteria that we common have agreed upon.
Whether that is to integrate or not some of the international IGF objectives that very well up to you to decide, but the common criteria and transparency elements are crucial for us.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: A question to you. Would you propose that we also define a set of rules maybe different from the global IGF and published among the Web site? Would that make it easier for you as the Council of Europe to say, okay, if they are recognized by the EuroDIG we can agree on the rules within Europe as whole and then would it make it easier for you to assign funds to these initiatives? Would that be a conclusion?
>> PATRICK PENNINKCX: That can definitely be part of the conclusions. Now, as you know, you are best to know, we have an exchange of letters with EuroDIG as Council of Europe in order to support the, EuroDIG association. Yes, indeed, within that exchange of letters there's no specific mention of the national IGFs but EuroDIG for us is a recognized partner. In that sense it would be helpful to have at least some elements maybe for discussion listed on your Web site as well.
>> LAURA HUTCHISON: Laura Hutchison from Nominet. We pride the secretariate for IGF. The mention of rules makes me slightly nervous because it does sound quite prescriptive and I think guidelines or a framework is maybe more appropriate. We need to make sure it's not too rigid and it's flexible and it's not simple enough that one thing would work for everybody.
I think it's also important not to stifle discussion and if we become too prescriptive with what we require people to do we might limit discussions in some way maybe. So I would agree that we do need to have some framework but I think we need to be careful about that.
I think it's also very important to communicate the requirements. I don't think we publish everything that is required. We don't publish a list of participants, I don't think. I think better communication and linkages between both sort national IGFs and regional and also up to the global IGF is important to make sure any framework requirements are communicated.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: And you are one of the good guys so you are not reckless.
I agree with you that modern rules this is best practices that we have to look for but certain sense this is the goal that we have to try to improve in order to be accountable and transparent.
I would turn the question. Does anybody have a problem with these rules? Rules or guidelines.
Yeah, please.
>> CHRISTIAN SINGER: Okay. This is Christian Singer from Austria.
Well, rules sounds very strict. So it's not national laws. These are rules and there are sanctions if you disregard them, so it's very strict. But I see all the Internet Governance Forum as part of a pyramid. I mentioned that yesterday. The top of the pyramid is the IGF and then the regional ethics and the national IGFs, and each step somehow influences the higher step. So on the top you have the collection of all national and regional opinions coming from the local sources, same in society, and these are different. The Australian IGF tackles different ones than the German IGF. They are common topics and they are reported and somehow influence the IGF. So if you want to have this pyramid, you need some sort of basic common structure. Therefore ‑‑ which is here incorrectly called the rules is basically a good idea, but it should be quite informal as the IGF was invented as a very informal instrument. It should be shaped in a way that you can compare the outcomes of the national IGFs and have a common format to be reported to the IGF itself, but rules I think that's very formalistic and I think the life of the IGF is that it's informal and should stay so.
>> MODERATOR: But you don't have nothing against any of these guidelines?
>> CHRISTIAN SINGER: No, nothing at all.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Just to make a point of clarification. The headline says rules and basic standards. So this is actually what I have wrote, but on the IGF Web site it says principles and practices for open inclusive. On the other hand, the way they are applied are like rules. If you don't fulfill these things which are listed there, you are not on the IGF Web site. Although it says principles and practices, they are applying like rules. Then we have a comment from the lady.
>> AUDIENCE: Just before answering, just a quick note from Bosnia Herzegovina, we have submitted our report, but probably from the IGF secretariate due to the lack of time they didn't post it yet.
I would second transparency but especially flexibility when it comes to diversity because often biggest challenge to involve all stakeholders, especially government and private sector.
If we didn't have support from ICANN and OSC representative of freedom of media that basically pushed so to speak the involvement of these stakeholders I'm not sure that we would have that diversity. On the other hand, I would also add the importance of gender diversity there.
>> AUDIENCE: Yosef Massan speaking on behalf of the Finnish Internet Forum, with the experience of organizing six national IGFs. Like Laura I'm also quite ‑‑ let me say it makes me wary to talk about rules as we do not have any kind of contractual relationship neither with the IGF nor with the EuroDIG. So there's no exchange of letters, there is nothing else except that we consider ourselves to be a national version of an IGF, and therefore I think the ‑‑ if we talk about common criteria that could be something, or share some principles and values.
More specifically on the requirements, I think, you know, organizing process may be a multistakeholder based preparations, yes, publishing an agenda, but when it comes to listing for example the number of attendees or the names then you might have some rules and regulations nationally on what to do if you build a register of people. So can you publish it or not.
Another thing is that statistics always lie. And, for example, we have organized two events at the national parliament but the ones in the building never register. We gain a lot by having the event in a place where you have important people just walking in and out but not registering.
Thanks.
>> MODERATOR: I have a question, because your IGF is one usually the earliest in the year. So very often you decide ‑‑ you discuss without having in mind what the IGF will talk about the global IGF, but you can come back to this later eventually. Because in the pyramid if we go along in a process that goes according to the time stamps, the fact that you do before that you know what will be the topic of the IGF means this will hamper your possibility to contribute.
>> AUDIENCE: It certainly does. We organize the first event in ‑‑ it was September, October, right after the billionaires IGF. And our perception of how this should be done is we should do a national one, regional one, and then a global one within a year. So building really from bottom up. But I do realize we're planning to have the event next year in April. This year it was already February. Whatever it is, if it's February or April, it's already quite early because the mag will have a meeting in possibly January or. It will be really challenging for a national IGF to react ‑‑ when the IGF ‑‑ I think the policy menus thing was ‑‑ it was really about February or March, something like that, you're right. And also it goes back to what kind of rules we want or what kind of demands we have for a national IGF. I'd be really careful on putting a top down approach so that the global one would be setting the national agenda because the capacity to discuss global issues and in this case of policy menus really isn't an issue in Finland anymore. We would really see the national ones feeding the global agenda for the following year. So the calendar year is very challenging in any way you put it to have a proper process between the nationals and the global IGF.
>> SUBI CHATURVEDI: Thank you. My name is Subi Chaturvedi. I want to respond specifically to the question raised about whether these rules or standards or suggested guidelines are adequate.
It is to EuroDIG that a lot of national and regional initiatives as to how they can put together a national or regional initiative I concur with the point that the global IGF should not be leading the agenda of what topics should be discussed organically, but as far as these rules are concerned, a lot of new initiatives have face problems because they have been told that it should be multistakeholder but must be housed with the state or with the government and should also only be done as a national initiative if it is funded through public money. So I think we need to expand on these guidelines. We need to be more specific, and we need to be more clear as to what we're suggesting. By way of a national initiative, should it just be any three stakeholders coming together, which is what the idea of secretariate has indicated for it to be a national initiative. I was horrified when someone asked for a template but I think it's important we find some time and space on EuroDIG and Council of Europe section to indicate how is it new initiatives can come up and replicate these national and regional initiatives. It's important because you stagnate it for other initiative, just a number 40. There are so many more could come up. More delineation would be helpful in my opinion.
Thank you.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you.
So then I suggest that we try to already integrate to answer to the second question because the very length of this. If not we will have no time to discuss. But I think if you can integrate also the answer to the second question.
>> AUDIENCE: I think that the basic principle of all IGF at all the level is ‑‑ it should be equal footing for discussing the Internet governance problems and questions. And all the issues of ‑‑ in the least doesn't matter to me. For example, the way of financing how the local Internet forum can be financed, sometimes maybe they need ‑‑ participants should pay for participation, because we have very different situations in countries. In Russia we can finance such a forum based maybe on our budget and sometimes the organizers can have different sources of financing, but sometimes maybe in France you talked about they should take some money to cover the expenses.
Thank you.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: So the last speaker is a gentleman here and then we will wrap up to the first part.
>> FINN PETERSEN: Thank you. And my name is Finn from Denmark. I have also been arranging our national IGF for many years and I will only echo what Yosef said that, of course, we would like to have a coordination and if we could have the same themes, it would be good. But for practical reasons we will start our preparation of the IGF in January even though we will have it in September. Because we are involving all stakeholders and have several meetings with them and discuss it. And we would like to have the points on the agenda which the stakeholder feed from. And that's why we have been successful in order to attract 500 people to the Danes IGF which is quite a lot for us. So we would like to have things which are relevant for the Danes that feed into process later on that would be fine but it will be difficult to feed it into the next IGF because we start early and we have the IGF in September which normally is practical if we want to have politicians before the parliament are starting.
>> MS. SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you very much.
>> MODERATOR: Can you summarize?
>> MS. SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Yes.
In order to wrap up and as an action item for this year of secretariate I would take a agree or disagree. I would take that we might need some guidance, best practices we can maybe publish on the EuroDIG Web site. This is a screenshot from the Web site which makes it maybe easier for new initiatives to build up, for others to follow this, but we want to ‑‑ we won't be as strict as the IGF rules or basic standards are and we won't ask you to submit a report and all these things. We will just make some additional explanations on best practices and guidelines on the EuroDIG Web site. This is what I take up on the first question is there any disagreement in the room? Is this not the case?
Then for the second part do we need common goals, is there need to include global goals in each national regional agenda? I heard various times that actually national IGFs would prefer not to get a top down topic from the IGF but rather bring up topics from their national agenda to the global IGF. We do face some problems in terms of aligning the processes when does every region start but at least this is something we can try within Europe. I mean, it would be probably more difficult to align the processes with the global IGF, but we could at least try to align the processes within Europe that also the national topics feed better into the EuroDIG agenda.
And this brings us actually already to the cert point and I would just like to give that question in the room, is this the case that we really want to have this pyramid process so that the topics feed from the bottom to the regional and then to the global level because then we could discuss on Point 3 and 4 how we are going to do this. Are there any objections on this? I think this is not the case.
>> MODERATOR: One point that I want to ‑‑ being a member of the Mac since the beginning, the experience I have is that the European problems are not so much relevant for the global IGF, because we have specific problems that are typical of developed countries while at the Mac the overcoming and mostly urgent topics that become the global topics are linked to development countries. So there is a discrepancy between what we discuss in Europe and then where we go to the topics you will see that there is a huge discrepancy. So how to cope this distance is one probably that we need to face.
>> ELISE LINDBERG: Thank you. Elise Lindberg again from Norway.
I'm not sure that I agree totally because I see the IGF, here we have a lot of topics that are also relevant in Europe but we might have other angles to it. I see the neutrality debate, very high on the agenda here. The accountability is of course very relevant for us. We've heard about discussions. So I don't think it is a problem that we are so separate from the global IGF. But that's my opinion.
>> MODERATOR: I merely talk ‑‑ one of the most painful exercises in the market is when we have to decide the topic of the year, and the main topic of the year every year is about developing countries, is the access, is the next 2 billions.
>> ELISE LINDBERG: I agree on that one, of course. That is why we try not ‑‑
>> MODERATOR: Down the pyramid, yes, there are a; lot of things in common, but the main theme of the year usually is very distant from the European.
>> ELISE LINDBERG: So we try not to have a topic of the year, because that is difficult.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you very much.
You all have this paper on your desk and these are actually the results which you national organizers send in when we were asking for the three hot topics you had in 2015 in euro national initiative. What we were doing, we made it a little bit more colorful. If you can't read it that's why we gave you the handouts. What we were doing, we were trying to put your topics into the categories we defined for EuroDIG 2015. We added two more categories which is privacy and copyright. They were not on the EuroDIG agenda. Of course privacy and copyright was not discussed but not originally foreseen in the categories. So actually what I think this colorful graphic illustrates quite good that they all crosscutting issues which come up in at least quite a number of national and regionals and Europe.
And the question would be if we really want to bring up the topics from the national level to the regional to the global level, we have to find ways how we are going to do this practically but not putting more bureaucracy on top of each initiative. So I would like to ask you what are your ideas, how could EuroDIG as regional be helpful in terms of setting a theme for the year, compiling proposals, finding a European theme where every national or many nationals are happy to talk about which absolutely makes also sense on a national level and where we then can first discuss this on the EuroDIG level and then if there are really good results we can then submit the sort of ‑‑ let's not say submit but at least we all go to the IGF for the common European understanding or we at least have some input from the European discussion which we then can bring into the various sessions here at the EuroDIG. One proposal, and I would like to ask you if this would sound feasible or helpful for you is that call for proposal to EuroDIG is doing that you take out issues from this call of proposal, I mean it's taking place always from October to December the year before. So it would be right in time for your national initiative. You can actually take out proposals from there, use the categories. You could engage your community to submit proposals so that also your regional viewpoint comes into this call.
I would like to know from you this if this sounds feasible for you or if you think this wouldn't work in the way you are organizing and you are constructing your agenda.
>> WOLF LUDWIG: I'm not in my role as EuroDIG program and director but as a coordinator of specifically IGF.
We discussed this issue last spring in length, and there was a discussion to consider connecting the next billion. And we got from our steering committee almost unique feedback. If we start with such a topic so we address an insider community of perhaps five to ten people maximum, it would be the killer topic for national IGF. Therefore we said in principle it's the national level setting with IGF. So each in the composition in Switzerland as Italian part, et cetera. And also said we will launch a call for issues, like so best practice EuroDIG, it worked. We got 15 proposals and around 15 proposals it was drafted, and it was really down to national sensitivities. And I think this is the best approach, bottom up is a good thing. And anything what is discussed on the global level, I think 99 percent of the population of whatever country you mention has no clue and I would even say has no interest but is discussed as a global IGF.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: I think this is the common understanding in this room. The question is how can we link to the Swiss with the EuroDIG a little bit more and then maybe so I would put that out again.
>> MODERATOR: I would ask if you see this as something that you wish to or you want to leave alone and you don't care at all then you don't see need for having streamline from national to European dimension.
>> PATRICK PENNINKCX: Patrick Penninkcx, Council of Europe again. I just wanted to say as much as we are interested in receiving or getting clearer guidelines with regards ‑‑ or guidelines whatever we now discussed to recognize IGF because that's helpful for us.
On this item I think for us as an institution it is completely up to the IGF community to decide that for themselves. That is not for anyone else to intervene into that. And maybe contrary to ‑‑ because the Council of Europe is a very pyramidical organization, but I'm very much hesitant to too much pyramids. In the process like this I think pyramids often get reversed quite quickly and the bottom up can become top down rather quickly.
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: Thank you.
Lianna from Armenia IGF.
I think we'll be very glad to have the categories. The call for topics would be on national level. That is I think that they will be bottom up so that all participants would have the national topics which would be relevant for us only. But the categories if you have different some categories, we will use that. I think that that will be helpful for us in that sense. So there is a need for that.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Very good.
Could you think if the categories are on the EuroDIG Web site that you also use that EuroDIG as site as a platform for your call or do you think this needs to be separated as well? Would your community feel more comfortable on an Armenian Web site?
>> LIANNA GALSTYAN: I think that would be more comfortable for doing on our Web site but by the time we started the processing of calling for topics if you have that categories we will take them and use it to sort out the topics and categories for us. But that will be more comfortable on our Web site rather than EuroDIG one.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Good point.
>> MODERATOR: As a sort of matrix then that you can decline and use and apply.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Actually, good idea. I also think it makes it easier then for the EuroDIG follow‑up if we have national and have categories and feed that into the program more easily.
Any other comments?
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you. The Finnish experience again.
I think I would be quite positive to having common core of proposals but as Finn just said on the previous agenda, but they're quite mixed so I'm talking about points one to four at the same time, the national process is ‑‑ they vary and they're quite long. Like I mentioned that we're planning to have our event next year in April but we already in September had a meeting when we decided that April might be a good time and we already discussed some of the possible topics.
Now, when we set the agenda, it's always good to have a face‑to‑face discussion instead of an corporate proposals because it's easy to grab someone by the neck and say you are organizing the session instead of doing a shouting in Europe and then hoping someone will pick up and then we would have an agenda.
But looking at the map made me realize that Europe is actually quite the diverse content and there are many, many levels to this. This is a pan European dialogue then we do have a European union with a common digital single market. All this digitalization policies. Actually I think that a EuroDIG common call for proposals could actually ‑‑ like already this hot topic is pretty much taking the temperature of the national IGFs and use that two ways, actually help identify regional issues and maybe in that way bring regions together and be a framework for organizing more subregional IGFs than just the CDIG, which I think is a wonderful initiative.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you.
Any other comments or questions or ideas?
Christian, can I point on you because you had quite good ideas during the session yesterday. Would you just like to repeat what your ideas are on this topic?
>> CHRISTIAN SINGER: Yes, of course.
Well, I think that all IGFs, the regional, the local IGF are interlinked. The IFG only makes ends if there is some sort of feedback from the society all over the world and IGF itself will not be in a position to invite all members of the Civil Society for obvious reasons. So you have to distribute the shape of the opinion, you have to distribute the responsibility of writing papers to the local organizers of the IGF. The clear intention of the Austrian IGF was to present the paper which follows two tracks, first to lay down the Austrian position to lay down the industry in the public sector to get some sort of feeling what is the intention of the society, of the Civil Society of the industry and the political forces.
But the second track is to have some sort of input to the higher level, to have some paper that we can present, and actually we have presented and distributed a paper from the Austrian IGF where we lay down in two pages the outcome of the IGF. And this could and should influence the selection of the topics for the IGF for the local IGF. That's what I said in my first remark is a pyramid. Maybe it's not a good example but I think if we want to have an IGF that promotes the Internet and is good for the society and is good for mankind, then we must have some sort of feedback from the people in the countries and I think the national IGF, they serve to collect that opinion.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Thank you.
Andrea?
>> ANDREA BECCALLI: Thank you, Sandra. Andre Beccalli from ICANN.
All right just looking at this chart. I think it's a tremendous resource for inspiration for analysis of what has been discussed in Europe on these topics. And you first mentioned we are all Europeans, we have all engaged at the European level for five year digital market. Many of those cross in the digital single market but the difference is within the European union it's not multistakeholder process. It's very much formal regulatory approach. That's this strength of the IGF and strength of EuroDIG. I think we should capitalize from those experiences on the region wide to do that we can just hop back on the first part. Probably already asking practicably to the IGF and making this feedback available and easily accessible to everybody that is interested in IGF, it's the first step towards a guideline basically. Look, that's what is cast and another step is that's how we organize it.
First I was very surprised ‑‑ not surprised but I was thinking that they are starting to organize in September. They start at the end of August to start organizing Jeff meet September. At the end of August that means we are still on the beach. So you see this is already the best practice. For Italians would be good to look. Some basic things you can never take for granted.
>> MODERATOR: He means month but wrong in the year. Do it in August for making September 2016 would be even better than the Finnish.
>> ANDREA BECCALLI: I don't have much hope on that.
And last thing that I was thinking I wanted to mention is the software that the EuroDIG uses for asking for corporate proposals.
And probably that's something that we can think of offering to the national IGF and people that want to organize the national IGF, and I say look that's a way we can do. If we can in a way use it also at the national level.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Any other comments?
So far I would take not as a result but at least as ideas that the joint proposal wouldn't work on a national level but this categorizing thing might be helpful in terms of getting the process maybe a little bit more aligned if Europe and also giving feedback to the global IGF. That's what I took from this discussion and we might even bring that up for the next planning circle and on the global IGF to say, listen, these were the categories, these were the topics discussed in Europe. Please consider it or use this for your planning. This might be one idea.
Another idea is that the EuroDIG secretariate comes back to the national IGF asking for the three hot topics and we start categorizing it and coloring it over the year already, which makes it probably more easier to set the agenda for the EuroDIG. So this is something I take ‑‑ these are just ideas I'm just brainstorming. You can send in more ideas and we will contact you when we have thought about how to organize this or do this in detail. If you were also raising your hand, what do you think?
>> WOLF LUDWIG: Well, basically I am very much a friend and in favor of any coordination there possible.
On the other hand, I believe one of the most fascinating facets of Europe is its diversity, language, cultural whatsoever. I think as far as I've observed it, that three conditions for national IGF initiatives are so different and so various in most of the European countries that any sort of standardization would be dangerous and counterproductive. Therefore I was looking with a certain fascination when I saw that there were so many overlapping hot topics. If this turns out like this, great, but we shouldn't try to enforce something like this. We should give kind offers. So if an initiative comes up and says we need some advice, assistance, step in help them as much as you can together with the Council of Europe and as helpful sources. Some IGFs may prefer to be very reluctant. So let them alone. Let them do their own, et cetera. So let's say EuroDIG has an offer. Whoever wants to coordinate with us is always welcome, warmly embraced but we will not in no way impose ourself to anybody. So let's keep it on such a level.
Thanks.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: I totally agree with you and there was not a meaning of over coordinating the national ones.
>> FREDERIQUE DUNN: Thank you. Frederique Dunn speaking Internet Society.
So I can relate to pretty well everything that's been done so far. I appreciate that the way the EuroDIG framed these issues is an inspiration for national IGF. We are very much a supporter of the bottom up approach and appreciate that here. The national IGF recall they need to drive their own topics because this is what matters for them.
But this is about the topics. We need to also, I believe, to give an inspiration about the forward looking view. And the way you design issues, you design this framework is it needs to remain a source of inspiration.
This is our role as the EuroDIG level, I believe. This is nothing to do with the topic that continue to be driven in very bottom up manner, but this is about the two, three issues that we feel we need to continue to work on. We should actually still have the connecting experience even though it will change around the years. It will become in Europe the relevance of Internet why do you say do you guys want to connect me. This is about how relevant the Internet is for me. But this is part of this next billion and we need to keep working on this. Security is exactly the same issues. So I believe I like the flow actually of a bottom up and top down approach when we continue to entertain this flow.
Thank you.
>> LAURA HUTCHISON: Laura Hutchison from the UK IGF secretariate again.
I like the hot topics diagram. I think that helped with the flow as Frederique just mentioned. It's interestingly as wolf mentioned the overlap between the topics and I have a suggestion. Haven't fully thought it through. I was just wondering you reach out to your network to get topic suggestions for workshops. I wonder if there's another opportunity to reach back out later when the sessions are more identified to go back out to the national network to ask for input into sessions or to shape speakers, for example, to make sure that you then continue to have integration with the national network and to include sort of voices from different countries.
>> MODERATOR: I think that's an excellent idea, no?
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: This is an excellent idea but I'm just thinking, haven't thought it through. To do this we would actually need to know what you are discussing already. So we would need to identify that rather early in order to see, okay, UK was discussing a topic on XYZ and we need input on this topic. So, yeah, we have to think about it and we will definitely as the EuroDIG secretariate we will come back to national organizers with a proposal and, yeah, if you have feedback when you thought about it a little bit more this would be really great. And I mean, what we did here was, I was really impressed that all of the national IGFs in Europe that replied to sending the three hot topics. This was really great. I mean, I was really very pleased about it because usually people do not reply on such a short time. And I really think is a useful thing and we can around it. We just don't know yet how.
Are there any other topics on this issue? Because otherwise I would just quickly touch the last issue.
No questions? No comments?
The last issue was question for is there a need for subregional IGFs such as the CDIG or Scandinavian or Baltic. If so can we start in Brussels.
I would like to give the Floor very quickly to Serena. The scenic initiative started this year in line with the EuroDIG and Sofia. That is an idea because the CDIG will proceed for the next years. It's funny. The CDIG set a seed into this region because afterwards Bosnian IGF was organized for the first time. I think that's a very good step forward and we might be able to do this for other regions like the Baltic region or the Scandinavian there is some ideas that there is a Scandinavian discussion taking place. Has not necessarily be an ongoing initiative. It can only be once when you're row dig is in that region but I advise Serena to go quickly through the experiences.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you, Sandra.
Hello everyone.
We had this meeting this year in Sofia I want to say Belgrade and we took advantage that EuroDIG was in our region, in south eastern Europe and this help us actually start something, start the IGF initiative for us. Trying to answer the question is there a regional IGF necessary such as CDIG. I think this there is a need for something in the region in it that part of Europe to discuss about issues like the IDNs for the other part of the continent. We would say yes it is, but we also see value in having the first event coordinated in a very good way with EuroDIG. Thank you. Appreciate it again for this. Because we were able to make our people in the region more aware about the whole discussion of Internet governance at the European level. This was helpful for us for the region. And also the other way around trying to make the rest of Europe aware that we have some issues in our part of Europe and these should also be looked a bit more in the rest of the continent.
Moving forward we are continuing with CDIG but keeping it in the region because of travel costs mostly. People will have it more difficult to travel to somewhere else but we are trying to get the processes connected. You might be aware that we have a joint conference issues this time with EuroDIG and CDIG. Someone from the south eastern part can submit a proposal for either CDIG or EuroDIG for the joint call. This should help us see also the connections between the topics, what people in the region see interesting them and those for Europe.
We will see how this work, the joint issues and keeping the processes together and we will report on that. Maybe that will inspire some other regions in Europe.
Thank you.
>> PATRICK PENNINKCX: Council of Europe. I just wanted to say I think these regional initiatives may be very interesting for two points. One, if they can identify common issues, that is that they have something in particular to debate and that region also lends itself to that. My Armenian colleague may contradict me but I see it fairly difficult in the Caucasian region to organize a Caucasian IGF. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong. But I believe that, for example, because if you look at a list of IGFs which we had previously, quite a number of them are obviously in western Europe, and that comes to the second objective such a regional IGF may have, and that is that it may stimulate effectively the creation and reflection, given the Bosnian example, it may stimulate the creation of IGFs in countries for which this is currently not a priority.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: >> Thank you very much.
Yes, please.
>> FINN PETERSEN: Thank you. Just looking at the resources, having another layer where we should look at whether we divert resources from the national IGF or the EuroDIG or the international EuroDIG. So there's already many things going on and adding another platform. I think we should be careful. It might work at least in Scandinavia. We have participants from other countries in the national IGF and of course there might be the same scenes we are participating in but it will be another layer which I will from the outset be a little reluctant upon.
>> AUDIENCE: Thank you.
I share Finn's concerns about adding another layer but if we would see that as, let's say a session, pre‑session in Brussels because we will be there any way to see whether that is feasible, doable, see what we want to do and it wouldn't really need to be another IGF process but would be a gathering of IGF to start with. To be more specific now it's Scandinavian. Scandinavia to my knowledge is Sweden, Norway and Denmark so I would be out. Therefore I would rather use the term Nordic because we do have a Nordic corporation council, for example, which is an interparliamentary official body including Greenland, Iceland, what else? So that might actually be the right group of countries to gather together in Brussels if we decide to do so. Also we might rest on some more parliamentary interest in this or policies towards this.
>> I Like nordic. You have the "dic" in it already.
>> MODERATOR: >> This is an interesting opportunity. This year in Brussels we have a very interesting opportunity because this could be also a way to make aware some MPs of this process because if you see here the MPs there are some MPs of some countries, the usual suspects but many other countries that are not aware and the meeting we had with the parliament the other day was quite surprising with one of them saying I came here by surprise because No. 1, two, three ‑‑ four refused to come. This was a little bit astonishing for me. If because of the links you can you can have with your national MP's representing yourself in Brussels this could be a useful opportunity to make them aware. Probably this year more than any other aware.
>> SANDRA HOFERICHTER: Any other comments on this issue?
Then I would wrap up the last question because I see next people are coming in the room already.
The offer is out. If any region I think it would be probably the next Nordic region. If they want to do a pre‑session they are welcome to do so. We can help coordinating with the rooms, logistics and so on. I think it makes definitely sense when we are in Estonia next year because Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia there is no national IGF so far at all, but there is also I spoke to people there is somehow a need to discuss local issues. We might have Baltic as a pre‑event EuroDIG 2017. This should not necessarily add another process. This can be a one‑time event, they can proceed afterwards, they might proceed on a national level. That's totally up to them. We want to offer you something. We want to offer help and pleas do not hesitate to come back to us if you think we can somehow help you with your national initiative in terms of content process whatsoever.
And last ‑‑ I would kindly like to ask you to take as many as the messages and fliers back to your communities because we don't want to take them home in our suitcases. We brought them all here. And please, please encourage your communities to participate in the call for proposals, which is still open until 31st of December as usual. And if you want to shape the agenda that's the only way at EuroDIG to do it, also to bring up here the topics which are of interest for you. And then another announcement, registration for the planning meeting for the open planning meeting taking place in Brussels on 26th of January will open on first of December. So please register for that if you want to come to Brussels and help with the agenda.
I would like to thank from my point of view already for your active participation and would like Jacques to close the meeting.
>> MODERATOR: Yes, just simply to thank all of you for being here. We're not receiving the information because we're not on our mailing list but are interested to be informed probably they can drop us a visit card if they still have one after the four days of IGF or you can write to us. Because then we will keep you informed of future development.
Thank you very much to everybody.
(Applause)