The NGI Sargasso consortium attended the NGI Forum 2025, celebrated on the 19th and 20th of June in the Albert Borschette Congress Center of Brussels, the Belgian capital, in an edition focused on Building an Open Internet Stack for European Digital Sovereignty through several insightful talks, panel discussions and success stories of beneficiaries funded by the Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative around the need to build a stronger and more sovereign Europe in NGI terms.

The NGI Sargasso coordinator, European Science Foundation, was there, together with our partners Sploro, AUSTRALO and Mobile World Capital Barcelona Foundation, to join the discussions on Digital Sovereignty, network with the NGI ecosystem and meet some of our NGI Sargasso Innovators who joined this date.

NGI Sargasso attended the talks on Digital Sovereignty at the NGI Forum 2025 and networked with the NGI Community

The Next Generation Internet Forum, or NGI Forum 2025, kicked off with the NGI Commons workshop on “Digital Commons as tools for building Digital Sovereignty”, moderated by Monique Calisti, from Martel Innovate, including an incredible lineup of experts tackling one of Europe’s most critical challenges:

  • Sean Bohan (OpenWallet Foundation) delivering the keynote on digital sovereignty.
  • Panel discussion with Denis Roio (Dyne.org foundation), Pascal Steichen (Luxembourg House of Cybersecurity), and Karin Lammers (Independent Consultant).

The conversation highlighted how digital commons can serve as the foundation for Europe’s technological independence while maintaining our values of openness and innovation.

A major moment at the NGI Forum 2025 occurred when Thibaut Kleiner, Director at DG CONNECT at the European Commission, delivered a keynote that’s setting the strategic direction for Europe’s digital future.

“We started the NGI community 10 years ago, the concept, and now next year we’ll have projects still running. My message is that we are also at a stage where we need to move on. We need to build on what we have, and to go to the next stage. We want to go from communities to product, and that’s why we introduced this concept of Open Internet Stack,” said Thibaut Kleiner.

During the panel breaks, and since we consider key collaborating with the Next Generation Internet Community, we always take the opportunity during physical events to meet our stakeholders and sibling projects, to catch up on our activities and to find potential synergies to keep creating an Open Internet. At the NGI Forum 2025 in Brussels, we had the chance to meet with our colleagues from Open Web Search and NGI Search projects, with whom we started collaborative activities after signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). In fact, some months ago, in October 2024, we took similar pictures with them at the Open Search Symposium 2024 (OSSYM24).

NGI Sargasso Innovators joined the NGI Forum 2025

Besides attending the inspiring talks, the NGI Sargasso consortium networked with some NGI Sargasso Innovators to learn more about the impactful work they’re doing to shape the future of the Internet.

We met Andrea D’Intino, Co-Founder at Forkbomb BV, partner leading the project DIDroom Uni Credentials, building a use case for digital identity and credentials that is interoperable for universities in Canada/USA and Europe, selected in our Open Call 4.

Benoît Maïsseu and François Chiron, from Werenode, proudly represented their NGI Sargasso-funded project from our Open Call 3 IoTPay, Internet of Things Payment System, aiming to build a secure and interoperable decentralized payment ecosystem for connected objects, reducing fraud, errors, and enhancing efficiency.

More about the NGI Forum 2025: Building an Open Internet Stack for European Digital Sovereignty

The NGI Forum 2025 is the flagship event of the European Commission’s Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative. It brings together some of Europe’s top Internet innovators at work to build an Internet of Trust, empowering end-users with more choice and control over their data and digital identity.

The 2025 edition focused on the building of an Open Internet Stack as conducive to European digital sovereignty and users’ empowerment. It served as a key platform to bring together innovators, policymakers, researchers, and industry leaders. The Forum provided an opportunity to reflect on major developments in digital sovereignty, open internet infrastructure, and digital commons, while fostering collaboration between diverse stakeholders shaping Europe’s digital future.

The aims of the NGI Forum 2025 were to:

  • Promote the NGI vision and its latest advancements
  • Engage key stakeholders in meaningful discussions on internet governance, digital innovation, and policy development
  • Facilitate networking and collaboration among the NGI community, industry leaders, and policymakers
  • Provide a space for knowledge-sharing on open-source development, trust technologies, and decentralized digital ecosystems

By bringing together experts and innovators, the Forum strengthened Europe’s position as a leader in digital innovation, ensuring that new technologies align with European values of openness, trust, and security, and at NGI Sargasso we feel very proud to contribute to this collective effort to build a free and democratic society!