Recipes for digital sovereignty in a changing geopolitical landscape

The roundtable «Recipes for Digital Sovereignty in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape», held at Canòdrom as part of Decidim Fest 2025, brought together public leaders from different European countries to share not only strategies, but recipes—like sharing the secret of a family dish learned in the trenches of democratic technological governance. Moderated by Renata Ávila, Executive Director of the Open Knowledge Foundation, the discussion unveiled a truth as simple as it is revolutionary: that digital sovereignty is not something you talk about, but something you do.

Barcelona, a laboratory for technological democracy

Francesca Bria, now at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) and leading EuroStack, opened the roundtable by recalling Barcelona’s legacy as a pioneering city in technological sovereignty. Referencing the debates at the Chaos Computer Club after Edward Snowden’s revelations, Bria posed an uncomfortable question: «After ten years of digital rights activism, are we losing the ability to design technological spaces in the face of technological oligarchies?».

During the government of Mayor Ada Colau, Barcelona placed the weight of technological sovereignty on popular decision-making capacity, not just on infrastructure control or data ownership. Projects like Decidim, which has held its festival at Canòdrom, became global benchmarks for the digital commons.

A historic crossroads for Europe

Now, from her position in the Italian government as part of the innovation investment fund, Bria works to bring this vision of technological sovereignty to the European scale. «We cannot separate digital sovereignty from political sovereignty. Cities will be the ones building democratic alternatives», she stated, referring to the recent victory of Zohran Mamdani in New York as an example of good news in this field.

But Bria was especially forceful in her analysis of the current moment, stating that «we are facing an unprecedented concentration of power since the industrial revolution». In an article recently published in La Vanguardia, Bria analyzes how Silicon Valley’s tech oligarchs, who previously built their own cities and currencies, now want to directly control the state to control the economic system.

Her recipes for digital sovereignty:

1. Strategic public procurement: «If we have to spend 40 billion on chips, we must think about which chips we are financing». Public procurement must enable real and sovereign alternatives.
2. Investment in critical infrastructure: Europe cannot depend on companies like Palantir for critical state services (education, police, immigration control). «Palantir is deciding the future of citizens, in a post-democratic way. We must stop it».
3. Monetary contributions to the commons: The state has a role in financing open source projects like Decidim. A «patchwork» of small projects is not enough; we need solid public infrastructures with real investment.
4. Regulate according to the WTO: Be aware that figures like Trump can cut off access to critical infrastructures based on their technology, and act accordingly.

AI models with minority languages, the Spanish case

Alberto Gago Fernández, Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence and Director of the Office Digital Spain 2030, explained the Spanish strategy that is already serving as an example in Brussels. «Things done at the city level also have their impacts in Brussels», he remarked, emphasizing that Pedro Sánchez was the first leader to talk about these issues on the World Economic Forum agenda in Davos.

The ALIA model family

For the past year and a half, the Spanish government has understood that to talk about digital sovereignty, you must also talk about linguistic sovereignty. This is how the ALIA model family was born, the first AI models developed with minority languages.

How do they do it?

• They have published 2 open source AI models accessible to everyone, the 2B and 7B models
• They have developed voice and translation models between Spanish languages (Catalan-Spanish, Basque-Galician…)
• They are working on a new model so that AI responds to real citizen problems
• They organize hackathons and training programs to develop new talent
• They are creating a network of digital innovation hubs at the European scale

Two clear objectives:

1. Competitiveness: Open source code based on non-proprietary technological resources that promote innovation from the ground up
2. Sovereignty: Create hyperspecialized solutions that balance a market that tends toward concentration

Alberto also highlighted the work during the Spanish EU presidency: «we met for more than 36 hours to make AI regulations mandatory». The AI regulation was opened to public consultation and more than 5,000 contributions were collected. «We are partners with more than 25,000 developers who have come together and are working to be part of the ecosystem», he added.

La Suite, an open source alternative for public administration in France

Virgile Deville, freelance worker and independent open source product manager, presented the French experience from DINUM (Interministerial Directorate for Digital Affairs), one of the most inspiring initiatives in European public digital infrastructure. La Suite is a public digital space that includes a text editor, a video conferencing tool, and email, all based on open source. The project was born during COVID-19, when France discovered it was too dependent on Zoom and Google Drive for remote work.

From dependency to sovereignty

«After the crisis, the assessment was that spending had been too high and everything was too compartmentalized in terms of tools and contracts», Deville explained. In a geopolitical context marked by cases like Trump and GAFAM, or tensions with the International Criminal Court, the French state decided to seek alternatives to exit Microsoft and relocate its services.

How do they do it?

The team developed a strategy based on:

1. Federated Identity (Proconnect): They turned France Connect into a public agency
2. TAPAS applications: Applications that do one thing to avoid being blocked by budget difficulties
3. Open source tools:
   • Block Note: text editor
   • YJS Realtime: real-time collaboration
   • LiveKit: video conferencing
   • Matrix: encrypted chat
4. Security and interoperability: They use OIDC (token authentication server)
5. MIT License: So other states can reuse it

The results?

Currently, La Suite has 375,000 monthly users. Germany and the Netherlands are also questioning their dependence on Microsoft and showing interest in this infrastructure that is neither from Silicon Valley, nor from Russia, nor from China.

The challenges of the state and open source

But Deville was also critical of the French state: «There are many public agents who are not contributing. The state does not assimilate the community contribution part, the commons dimension of free software». In terms of contribution, the French state’s contribution to open source has been only 0.04%. As moderator Renata Ávila pointed out, Microsoft does one thing very well: «they write public standards and ensure that procurement processes have requirements that favor them». And she adds that «what Microsoft offers is a fantastic finished product, where the public cannot say anything about the design».

A collective and urgent task

In the final debate, all speakers agreed on the urgency of acting in a coordinated manner. As Alberto Gago summarized: «we must act as a group of committed people and ensure that protocols are ready and the open source community is prepared for their implementation and transparency». Francesca Bria closed her intervention by recalling that «we cannot build participatory technology from above, with infrastructure from billionaires with hidden geopolitical intentions, since they have one objective: to end democracy».

The roundtable made it clear that digital sovereignty is not a lost battle, but it requires real public investment, political will, and the construction of solid alternatives that go beyond small projects. As Renata Ávila said at the beginning, «digital sovereignty is something you do, not something you talk about». And in Barcelona, at Canòdrom, during this week of Decidim Fest, the democratic and public alternatives that are already underway became evident.