Speaking at the summit on European digital sovereignty in Berlin, French digital minister Anne Le Hénanff backed a 12-month freeze on obligations for high-risk AI systems, arguing that a temporary halt is necessary to give companies time to adapt and to avoid legal uncertainty during the transition.
Facts and Figures 2025 shows that while connectivity is expanding, the quality of access remains highly uneven, shaped by disparities in speed, affordability and skills. Only 4 percent of people in low-income countries have 5G coverage compared with 84 percent in high-income states, and mobile data usage in wealthy countries is nearly eight times higher than in poorer ones.
The European Commission’s new evaluation of the Digital Services Act outlines where the regulation overlaps with other EU tech laws and how these areas may affect compliance. The findings will guide the Commission’s upcoming digital fitness check, a broader effort to streamline the EU’s digital rulebook alongside the Digital Omnibus package.
The meeting comes as the EU prepares revisions to its AI and data rules and reflects a broader debate on competitiveness, industrial strategy, and security.
The FCC’s proposal to unwind the Biden-era rules comes despite earlier federal assessments that stronger, binding requirements were needed to address long-term, persistent access by foreign threat actors.
The Technical Community Coalition for Multistakeholderism has submitted its input on WSIS+20 Revision 1, welcoming the document’s constructive direction and its explicit recognition of the technical community as a distinct stakeholder group. While supporting the permanent mandate for the IGF and provisions to strengthen its Secretariat, the coalition calls for clearer commitments on sustainable funding, deeper coordination across the Internet governance ecosystem, and the reinstatement of strong language rejecting state-controlled or fragmented Internet architectures.
India has published the official Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules 2025, setting out the operational framework that will govern how personal data is collected, processed, stored, and transferred under the DPDP Act. The rules introduce a phased implementation schedule, new compliance obligations for organisations, and detailed procedures for consent, notice, breach reporting, children’s data, and cross-border transfers.
The Council of the European Union has approved a regulation that harmonises procedural standards for handling cross-border GDPR complaints. The new rules introduce common admissibility criteria, strengthen the rights of complainants and companies, and set binding deadlines to speed up investigations.
During the WSIS+20 virtual stakeholder consultation on Revision 1, the Tech Global Institute called for restoring key commitments removed from the Zero Draft, including language on inclusion, public investment, rights-based safeguards, and explicit protections against mass surveillance. The organisation argued that the revised text weakens the WSIS vision and risks sidelining the Global South in shaping the next generation of digital governance.
In a letter to the European Commission, Greens/EFA MEPs express concern that the upcoming Digital Omnibus could dilute the EU’s existing digital regulatory framework. They argue that proposed changes risk undermining key laws such as the AI Act, GDPR, the Data Act, and Data Governance Act, and could work against Europe’s stated goal of digital sovereignty.
Civil Society Alliances for Digital Empowerment (CADE) is a project co-funded by the European Union.
