A strategy account on open source, digital sovereignty, civic capacity, and how Cyprus can do more than simply host decisions about our collective digital future.
Let me start from the top, or rather, the so-called top.
There is an official tech policy conversation taking shape, these days, as part of the Cyprus Presidency of the Council of the European Union in 2026. It is an exceptional occasion, and a great responsibility, that Cyprus is hosting European-level conversations on digital policy -at this specific moment in time- bringing together EU-level expert speakers around AI, digital sovereignty, cybersecurity, regulation, connectivity, investment, Europe’s place in the world and, hopefully increasingly, free/libre and open source technology.
Which is precisely why some of us have become a little restless.
These conversations are too important to leave entirely to politicians, ministries, big tech vendors, consultants and experts talking to one another. Not for any sinister reason, but because they are human too: doing their best, while also limited by their environments, their roles, and the formats and structures around them. As we all are. Which is precisely the point.
The official agenda is strong on high-level EU digital policy priorities: lot’s of emphasis on AI, competitiveness, geopolitics, innovation and business empowerment, sovereignty, investment and competitiveness, connectivity, cybersecurity and international partnerships. From an academic and policy-analysis perspective, however, the picture appears much less developed on the implementation questions where digital transformation actually becomes public life: procurement, institutional capacity, interoperability and open standards, civil society participation, digital rights, education, environmental sustainability, labour effects and local governance.
And something happens when digital policy is discussed without holding the above closely in mind. Technology can begin to sound like a something developed for states and markets, rather than something that is already organising childhood, education, culture, public spending, democratic participation and everyday life. What’s missing from the so-called top is the civic layer where digital transformation actually takes place and where we need to make sure it doesn’t go wrong: in procurement processes that need to be transparent, accountable and democratically sound; in school platforms and technological approaches to childhood that must centre care and protect children’s capacity to create beautiful futures, rather than steamroll over their rights in the name of safety; in public-sector dependencies that should be able to withstand powerful lobbies and commercial logics; in cultural tools, communication habits and data systems that must protect privacy, freedom of thought and expression.
These are not secondary concerns but the places where policy becomes infrastructure and digital transformation turns into contracts, platforms, habits, dependencies and everyday forms of power. They are also where technologies are quietly normalised before people have had a real chance to understand, question, reshape or refuse them.
We certainly welcome the fact that Cyprus is hosting EU-level tech policy conversations. But if it is to contribute meaningfully to Europe’s digital future, we urgently need to connect what scattered and unrecognised technical capacity exists locally, and ask what digital transformation would look like if it were guided by public value, democratic participation, open infrastructures and the common good.
This matters especially because Cyprus is not yet a mature digital policy environment. We are still in the middle of a “digital transformation” process that is uncritically shaped by capital, by so-called “safe” solutions that largely amount to powerful rather than critical alliances, by institutional fashion, imported platforms, procurement habits and the desire to appear modern, rather than by self-realised public strategies that take the common good seriously, or follow meaningful, or any, public consultation.
This is not to argue that Cyprus lacks capacity. On the contrary, there are researchers, technologists, educators, artists, public servants, civic actors and open source practitioners doing important work. But this capacity is scattered, under-recognised and still in the process of organising itself. The connection between policy and expert public conversation is weak. Civil society is only beginning to see digital rights as part of its field of concern. Experts and scientists are isolated in their institutional and professional corners -often disenchanted and sceptical that their expertise might actually be consulted on a policy level. And the people most affected by digital systems are treated as users, consumers, data subjects, students, patients, clients, or minors to be protected, an rarely as citizens with a say in the technological systems that increasingly organise their lives. While, typically, the cautionary voices of a wisely sceptical cohort of the elderly population is summarily dismissed.
So beyond the task of not just facilitating but also contributing to ongoing EU-level discussions, there’s also the matter of what Cyprus can bring together in itself. How can this be a place where we ask what kind of digital society we actually want? And beyond the local, how can Cyprus help connect the scattered experts, civic actors and communities who are already thinking more carefully, and bring them into a constructive public conversation?
Because Cyprus is small, this bridge is not impossible to build. Actually, it may be one of the things that Cyprus can do unusually well, if we manage to bring the right people into the room: researchers, educators, technologists, artists, civil society actors, public servants, free/open source practitioners, digital rights advocates, and anyone else who understands the ways that digital policy is now part of public life.
This is the starting point for what a few of us from ELLAK Cyprus and the Regional Representation of Next Generation Internet Zero have been working to put together under the heading of a Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week.
This is a somewhat unlikely coalition of freedom-respecting software advocates, digital rights people, researchers, civic technologists, open knowledge enthusiasts, artists, educators and policy nerds. We have spent decades watching important decisions about technology being made in rooms that were often too small, too specialised, too commercial, or simply too disconnected from the people who would have to live with the consequences. So when Cyprus gets the opportunity to host a European conversation about digital futures, our reaction is not simply “excellent” but also “who gets to be in that conversation, who gets left out, and how can we help?” All of which is actually less about Cyprus and more about making sure that open, democracy- and freedom-respecting, non-exploitative, non-proprietary, public-interest focused, free/libre and open source approaches are part of the conversation.
So this is what we are trying to do, and here’s what we’ve come up with, in reverse chronological order.
Our program is designed to influence and lead up to the 17 and 18 June, when the Deputy Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy is organising the official Cyprus Presidency event, Shaping the Next Digital Frontier. This will be one of the formal spaces in which the future of digital policy will be discussed.
In preparation for that, on 16 June, ELLAK Cyprus and the local representation of NGI0, Next Generation Internet Zero, have been working with OpenForum Europe, in this case led by Aimilia Givropoulou, to bring OpenForum Europe’s Capital Series to Cyprus, under the title Open Source and the European Union. This has been welcomed with open arms and is co-hosted by the Innovation Directorate of the Cyprus Institute, an institution uniquely well placed to understand and confidently initiate action on the potential of open source as a foundation for public-interest innovation, research collaboration and shared technological capacity.
So the OFE Capital Series and the Cyprus Institute are bringing key players of the Brussels-level open source policy ecosystem to Nicosia, connecting the local community with organisations already shaping the European and international open source landscape. The event is supported by sponsors including the Eclipse Foundation, GitHub, Linux Foundation Europe, SUSE and Red Hat, and by partners including the European Open Source Software Business Association (APELL), the Brno University of Technology, GFOSS, Internet Society Switzerland, and 101.CY among others
This helps make visible something that has long been present but under-recognised: a Cypriot free/libre and open source scene with knowledge, principles, technical capacity and public-interest commitments. For years, this scene has often been treated as peripheral to “real” digital transformation, even while many of its values, interoperability, transparency, shared infrastructure, public capacity, technological autonomy, are exactly what digital sovereignty, as an EU priority, now requires. The University of Cyprus will be represented, including Zeta Kapitsaki and Andreas Kasis of KIOS, alongside others from the local ecosystem, including ELLAK Cyprus’ very own Theodotos Andreou, also of Collabora. The event also brings in European free/libre and open source voices, including Paula Grzegorzewska of Linux Foundation Europe, Emiel Brok of SUSE, James Lovegrove of Red Hat EMEA and others working across open source policy, standards, cybersecurity, public digital infrastructure and strategic autonomy.
It gives local institutions a chance to recognise the open source advocates already in their midst, including those whose work has quietly followed these principles, transparency, interoperability, inspectability, shared maintenance, public accountability, technological autonomy and the refusal of unnecessary dependency, often against the grain and without always being named as open source work. And it gives us all a chance to pick the brains and look around through the perspectives of people who are thinking about these things at European and global scale. This helps create a bridge between Cyprus and the European open source policy conversation. But it’s not enough.
A high-level policy event, even a very good one, still works through a pre-set agenda. We also need spaces where the agenda is not fully determined in advance, and where participants can reflect, process, and collaborate on things as they arise. We need room for the awkward, local and practical questions: What is happening in our schools? How can digital sovereignty become a real priority in procurement decisions, not only a strategic slogan? Why are local NGOs and civil society organisations not yet central to this conversation? How do we address the superficial misconception that open source is “less secure”, while taking cybersecurity seriously? What is at stake beyond the surface of the Age Verification pilot, and how do we protect children without compromising their rights?
For this, we are also organising an Unconference on June 15th, where participants set the agenda together and the most urgent conversations are allowed to emerge. The Unconference is a way to make sure that the official and semi-official conversations do not simply float above the local ecosystem, but are grounded in the people, communities and institutions that actually have something to say about the digital future being discussed.
The Unconference will be hosted by CYENS Centre of Excellence, which is also significant. Its willingness to host this gathering speaks to its agility and responsiveness, along with the productive tension of the moment: as European-level discussions on open source, digital sovereignty and public digital infrastructure intensify, local institutions are invited to look for resonant work already happening within them.
And because digital futures must not only follow conference-like spaces and logics, on the evening before the Unconference, we are going to Limassol for a spontaneous and unscripted Libre Arts gathering in collaboration with NeMe.org, an art centre with FOSS tendencies and broad European art-world connections. This matters deeply.
The digital commons and tech policy are also about culture, imagination, authorship, sharing, tools, archives, education and the conditions under which people are able to create together. Artists can often perceive and articulate before policy does, how tools begin to shape expression, how platforms shape visibility, when copyright regimes start to shape memory, and how proprietary systems actively shape and limit pedagogy. Artistic communities can often communicate more directly, what digital policy language struggles to name: that technology is never only technical but also aesthetic, social, political, embodied and historical, because it shapes how and who can speak, make, share, archive, learn, and so on. And what is more, artists can also remind us of ways to creatively transform limits and dependencies into the tools and conditions of cultural freedom: free/libre creative software, open archives, shared knowledge, artistic autonomy, collective memory, and the right to live and create without being locked into extractive platforms and proprietary defaults.
And on the day before that, we kick everything off with a BBQ picnic, in Paphos (bring your drinks and something to put on the coal). Which is unquestionably the peak of all our strategic efforts. Because ecosystems are made through trust, food, introductions, friendship, and hospitality.
What is still missing, and what we would love help with at this point, is the following:
Join us and spread the word.Help us reach people, groups and institutions who should know that this is happening, especially those who care about democracy, education, digital rights, public infrastructure, culture, open knowledge and technological autonomy.
Help engage local NGOs and connect them with international digital rights organisations.This could take the form of introductions, informal discussions, call-ins during the Unconference, preparatory conversations, follow-up meetings, or simply making sure that people who should know each other finally do. One of the aims of this week is to help the Cyprus ecosystem become less isolated, and to connect local civil society concerns with the wider European and international digital rights landscape.
Help us engage the Cyprus University of Technology and other relevant academic actors. CUT has important expertise in areas such as interaction design, education, digital culture, media, communication, policy, engineering and civic technologies. We would welcome help in bringing relevant researchers, labs, students and departments into the conversation, not as passive attendees, but as part of a growing local ecosystem around open, democratic and public-interest technology.
Help bring the discussion to people beyond the usual technology circles.This includes educators, artists, parents, journalists, cultural workers, community organisers, public servants, legal experts, youth groups and local authorities. The questions raised by digital sovereignty, free and open-source software, digital rights and public digital infrastructure are also social, cultural, educational and democratic.
Help us turn this into something that continues after the week itself.We hope the Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week can create connections, working groups, follow-up meetings, shared statements, public resources and concrete proposals. We would welcome support in shaping these next steps, especially where they can strengthen local capacity and connect Cyprus to existing European efforts.
It would have been amazing to bring more of you in much earlier. But better late than later. The invitation is open. Please get in touch if you are nearby, curious, concerned, or just wondering how Cyprus might become more than a temporary host for someone else’s digital policy decision-making process.
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The Cyprus Open Digital Futures Week is an attempt to connect the official conversation with the civic and grassroots tech ecosystem. It is a way of saying that digital policy, beyond matters of infrastructure, markets, security or regulation, is also about democracy, education, culture, public money, autonomy, repair, community and the right to imagine technological futures that do not simply reproduce dependency. That is the conversation we are trying to open.
Chrystalleni Loizidou,
Nicosia 8/6/2026
allonan 