OpenForum Europe Capital Series event in Cyprus

The OpenForum Europe Capital Series event in Cyprus took place on 16 June and opened by placing open- source at the heart of Europe’s digital future. The opening remarks framed the conference as a bridge between European policy debates and the local Cypriot ecosystem, asking how digital transformation can be guided by public interest, democratic accountability, interoperability, local capacity, and care for the digital commons. A central message emerged early: digital sovereignty is not a slogan, but a practical capacity built through infrastructure, standards, procurement, research, skills, open communities, and public institutions. The event brought together policymakers, researchers, technologists, public-sector actors, civil society, educators, and business representatives, creating a space for dialogue across communities that do not always speak the same language but increasingly depend on one another.
Swiss Ambassador Christoph Burgener framed the conference as an important moment for Cyprus, Switzerland, and Europe to reflect on how technological transformation can be shaped in line with democratic values, human dignity, transparency, accountability, and fundamental rights. He highlighted Switzerland’s role as a leading innovation ecosystem and presented science diplomacy as a powerful tool through which smaller countries can contribute far beyond their size. His remarks connected open source with strategic autonomy, trust, cooperation, and public value, referring to the Swiss principle of “public money, public code” as a concrete expression of this commitment. He also emphasized that the digital future will not be built by technology alone, but through shared responsibility, partnerships, and trust.
In his keynote, Thibaut Kleiner from DG CONNECT presented open- source as a central pillar of Europe’s technological sovereignty. He argued that open source is no longer a marginal practice, but a fundamental reality of modern software development. Europe already has strong developer communities, open standards, and sectoral expertise, but it must become better organized in order to benefit from them strategically. The EU Open-Source Strategy, placed at the heart of the technological sovereignty package, aims to reduce dependencies, strengthen cloud and AI capabilities, support sustainable communities and foundations, improve cybersecurity, and make public procurement more open source-friendly. Kleiner also emphasized the importance of “public money, public code,” shared repositories, Open-Source Program Offices, and international cooperation, presenting open source not only as a technical model but also as a democratic, economic, and geopolitical opportunity for Europe.
The first panel explored open source as a practical response to Europe’s growing technological dependencies, particularly in cloud infrastructure, proprietary software, and public-sector ICT spending. Speakers argued that open-source and open standards are strategic instruments for digital sovereignty, interoperability, resilience, security, and economic value. A recurring theme was that Europe must move from simply using open-source to actively contributing to it. This requires stronger skills development through universities, better support for open-source communities, and a more systematic role for open source in public procurement. Participants also stressed the importance of cultural change within governments and institutions, the role of open-source champions and Open-Source Program Offices, and the opportunity offered by the EU’s technological sovereignty package to turn political ambition into practical capacity.
The second panel examined whether European regulation, particularly the Cyber Resilience Act, strengthens digital sovereignty or risks making it harder for European technology actors to build, compete, and innovate. The discussion focused on the practical challenges of implementation, including compliance costs for small and medium-sized enterprises, the readiness of notified bodies, vulnerability reporting obligations, and the still unclear responsibilities of open-source stewards and manufacturers. Speakers emphasized that compliance alone does not equal sovereignty, especially when European data may still depend on foreign cloud providers and external legal jurisdictions. At the same time, the panel highlighted open source, secure-by-design practices, supply-chain due diligence, self-hosting capacity, and European collaboration as essential tools for resilience. Regulation was therefore presented not as an end in itself, but as a test of whether Europe can combine security, openness, innovation, and practical support for those building its digital infrastructure.
Leon Schumacher’s keynote offered a complementary perspective by defining digital sovereignty not as nationalism or digital isolation, but as business continuity: the ability to keep operating when a vendor, platform, government, or geopolitical situation changes the rules. Drawing on examples such as the Huawei ban, the weaponisation of financial infrastructure during the war in Ukraine, and Europe’s dependency on US technology platforms, he argued that open source functions as a form of insurance against external control. He also showed how artificial intelligence complicates the traditional meaning of openness, since access to source code alone is no longer enough without model weights, training data, governance, and the ability to inspect, run, adapt, or replace systems independently. Schumacher strongly supported “public money, public code,” especially for strategic public infrastructure such as payments, while warning that major European initiatives such as the digital euro still risk excluding open source innovation and smaller companies. His central message was clear: Europe already has many of the necessary assets, but it must move from strategy to action if open source is to become a real foundation of technological sovereignty.
The following panel focused on what open source and digital sovereignty could mean in practice for Cyprus, moving the discussion from European strategy to local capacity and coordination. Speakers highlighted that Cyprus already has many of the necessary ingredients: active open source communities, university libraries and research centres with strong open science experience, high-performance computing and AI infrastructure, technical expertise, and links to European initiatives such as NGI and Open Source Program Offices. At the same time, the panel stressed that these efforts remain scattered and need to be connected through stronger advocacy, government engagement, public-sector adoption, sustainable funding, and collaboration between academia, civil society, SMEs, and open source businesses. The conclusion was that Cyprus does not need to start from scratch; rather, it needs to organize its existing knowledge, infrastructure, and communities into a shared public capability.
The “Trust by Design” panel connected Switzerland’s tradition of open innovation with today’s challenges around digital infrastructure, artificial intelligence, connectivity, knowledge access, and public trust. Speakers emphasized that trust cannot be added after technology has been built; it must be embedded from the beginning through openness, transparency, governance, security, interoperability, and public accountability. Examples such as SCION, Kiwix, and the Swiss National AI Initiative showed how open source can support resilient networks, offline access to knowledge, trustworthy AI, and more democratic control over critical systems. The discussion also highlighted the need for Cyprus and Europe to create stronger ecosystems in which academia, government, civil society, and industry collaborate around shared infrastructure and shared values. Overall, the panel framed “trust by design” as a practical commitment to building technologies that remain inspectable, inclusive, secure, socially responsible, and aligned with the public interest.
The closing remarks brought the event to an end by thanking the Cyprus Institute, OpenForum Europe, the sponsors, partners, moderators, speakers, and participants who made the Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week possible. Rather than simply summarizing the discussions, the speaker emphasized the deeper spirit of the day: the open technology ecosystem has moved beyond asking for attention and is now entering a moment of action, delivery, and responsibility. Themes such as governance, culture, funding, standardisation, cybersecurity, security by design, open source, open standards, and open technology were framed as part of a broader responsibility toward future generations. The central message was that today’s choices will shape tomorrow’s digital landscape, and that openness has now become a mainstream foundation for Europe’s digital and industrial policy.