ITS European Event 2026

ITS European Event 2026

The EU’s Path Towards Digital Sovereignty & Strategic Autonomy

Digital sovereignty has emerged as a defining theme in EU digital policy. Following the Draghi and Letta reports, the EU has intensified efforts to advance the Digital Single Market and strengthen the competitiveness of European industry and its technology sector.

These efforts unfold against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions and shifting alliances, with the established world order increasingly being challenged. Beyond industrial policy measures aimed at reducing dependencies on non-EU technology providers—most notably US cloud giants—the EU Digital Omnibus package envisages a broad simplification of the EU’s digital regulatory framework. More recently, the rise of AI has sharpened these concerns, underscoring the strategic importance of digital infrastructure inputs – such as AI chips powering data centres and cloud capacity for model training and inference – and access to data.

With this in mind, we welcome contributions that address EU digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy. We particularly invite submissions on the following topics:

• Digital economics in the age of AI
• Market power and ecosystem dynamics in technology markets
• Regulation of digital platforms and ecosystems, including the case for regulatory reform
• AI and the role of data access and digital infrastructure
• Cyber resilience and strategic autonomy
• Pathways toward realising the EU Digital Single Market
• Diversifying the sources of key resources in the digital economy 

Contributions on other topics are welcome, provided they engage with questions of digital sovereignty and strategic autonomy.

Abstract requirement:

Your abstract, which should be 400 – 500 words on 1 page of A4, should include the following:

• Title of the abstract / panel session
• A clear statement of the research question
• Remarks on the methodology adopted in the paper
• Outline of (expected) results
• 1 or 2 key references

Practical details

Your 1-page abstract should be submitted via email to jason.whalley@northumbria.ac.uk

The deadline for submissions is 7 April 2026.