History

Digital governance is the keystone of the programme: AI, blockchain, cybersecurity, data, the cloud and robotics all lead to the same question: who decides, who controls, who is accountable?

The nascent Internet was invented with ARPANET in 1969 and an engineers' governance, summed up by the IETF motto: rough consensus and running code. But one of the founding scandals of regulation broke out in France: the SAFARI project, revealed in 1974, aimed to interconnect government files through a single identifier.

The outcry led to the French Data Protection Act of 6 January 1978 and the creation of the CNIL, the French data protection authority. In 1981, the Council of Europe's Convention 108 became the first binding international treaty on personal data. Digital governance was born in Europe before the web even existed.

In 1996, John Perry Barlow published his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace. The same year, the United States passed Section 230, which would shape the platform economy. Europe adopted its data protection directive, then the United States created ICANN in 1998 to govern domain names under a multi-stakeholder model.

Lawrence Lessig formulated the most influential idea in the field: code is law. Technical architecture regulates behaviour as surely as the law does. The World Summits on the Information Society then pitted two models against each other: multilateral governance by states, or multi-stakeholder governance with states, companies, civil society and technical experts.

The compromise led in 2006 to the creation of the Internet Governance Forum, a place for global dialogue but without binding power.

Edward Snowden's revelations in 2013 shattered the narrative of a neutral and benevolent Internet. European courts became geopolitical actors: the right to be delisted with the Google Spain ruling, the invalidation of Safe Harbor with the Schrems ruling, then the adoption of the GDPR in 2016.

The GDPR became applicable in 2018, a few weeks after Cambridge Analytica. Then came the DSA, the DMA, the Data Act, NIS2, MiCA and the AI Act in 2024, the world's first general law on artificial intelligence. Three digital empires took shape: the American market, the Chinese state and European rights.

The Draghi report accused Europe's regulatory overload of costing the continent its competitiveness. In 2025-2026, Europe is trying to simplify without giving up, while international AI summits shift the debate towards impact, diffusion and global governance.