Europe is at a pivotal moment. Over the past few months, digital sovereignty has become one of the European Union’s foremost strategic priorities. Initiatives aimed at strengthening Europe’s technological capabilities, boosting the semiconductor industry, developing European cloud infrastructures, and regulating artificial intelligence all pursue a common goal: reducing dependencies while ensuring that Europe’s digital future remains aligned with its democratic values.
This is an essential debate. Yet one fundamental question often remains overlooked: who controls the physical infrastructures that make the Internet possible?
Infrastructure is also sovereignty
There can be no digital sovereignty without digital infrastructure. Fibre-optic networks, interconnection points, transport networks, data centres and local communications infrastructure are the foundations upon which all digital services are built.
When these infrastructures become concentrated in the hands of a few, so too does the power to determine how the Internet evolves, which regions receive investment, which economic conditions prevail, and how much room communities have to develop alternative models.
Digital sovereignty is not simply about manufacturing technology in Europe. It also means ensuring that communications infrastructures are open, accessible, interoperable and governed in the public interest.
Community Networks are an essential part of the solution
Community networks demonstrate that there is another way to build digital infrastructure. They are based on collaboration among citizens, public administrations, businesses, cooperatives and civil society organisations, all of whom share resources to create a common infrastructure that is open to everyone.
This model delivers benefits that closely match today’s European objectives by:
- strengthening infrastructure resilience
- fostering competition while reducing excessive dependency
- extending connectivity to areas where market incentives alone are often insufficient
- encouraging the reuse of existing infrastructure
- generating local economic value and distributed technical capacity
- reinforcing the technological sovereignty of communities
Any discussion of digital sovereignty that overlooks these models is leaving out an essential part of the solution.
guifi.net: A European experience before Europe began talking about it
For more than two decades, guifi.net has demonstrated that the Internet can also be built as a commons, where open infrastructure enables multiple operators, public administrations, companies, organisations and individuals to share the same network under transparent and non-discriminatory rules.
This model does not replace the market; it complements it. It lowers barriers to entry, promotes competition, optimises investment and ensures that both public and private resources generate shared value.
When Europe now speaks about resilience, strategic autonomy or open digital infrastructures, it is giving a name to many of the principles that guifi.net has been putting into practice for years.
An opportunity for European policies
Europe’s forthcoming digital policy agenda presents a unique opportunity for community networks to move beyond being regarded as isolated initiatives and to be recognised as a structural component of public policy.
This recognition should go beyond declarations of intent and translate into concrete measures:
- integrating community networks into digital infrastructure deployment strategies
- facilitating access to dedicated funding for open infrastructures
- promoting regulatory frameworks that encourage infrastructure sharing
- ensuring that public investment contributes to creating common, reusable assets
- supporting open and participatory governance models
Europe needs a digital infrastructure that is more resilient, more distributed and less dependent on overly centralised models.
Building sovereignty from the ground up
Digital sovereignty is not built solely in research laboratories, major technology hubs or the headquarters of large corporations. It is also built in municipalities, rural areas, neighbourhoods, cooperatives, small network operators and communities that choose to organise themselves to create shared infrastructure serving the common good.
The history of the Internet itself has shown that the most resilient networks are those that distribute capacity, share knowledge and encourage collaboration. If Europe truly seeks digital sovereignty, it must look beyond technology alone and embrace open models for governing digital infrastructure.
Digital sovereignty depends not only on who develops software or manufactures devices. It also depends on who owns the networks, how they are governed and whether those infrastructures are conceived as private assets or as a shared commons.
At guifi.net, we are convinced that an open, shared and community-driven Internet is not only possible, it is essential for building a Europe that is more resilient, more competitive and more democratic.