The question of digital sovereignty has become a key issue for the European Union. In times of geopolitical turbulence, the predominance of non-European digital players on the European market risks undermining the ability of European citizens, businesses and governments to determine their own destiny. Remedying this situation is not a purely legal task, but EU law can nevertheless provide tools to ensure that the European digital sector develops in a more autonomous way and in line with European values and interests.
The workshop seeks to explore the potential and limits of EU law in supporting the Union’s quest for digital sovereignty. We invite contributions that examine how EU law enables, constrains, or reshapes the Union’s ability to act in the digital domain, and how law mediates the tension between openness to global markets and the call for strategic autonomy.
The abstract submission has now closed and decisions on submitted abstract have been communicated to authors
DATE: 20 March 2026
VENUE: University of Antwerp, City Campus, Building R (1st floor) – Rodestraat 14, 2000 Antwerpen
PROGRAMME
| 8.30 | Registration – R.118 | |
| 9.00 | Opening of the workshop – R.118 · Jan Blockx · Feyisayo Lari-Williams · Pierfrancesco Mattiolo | |
| 9.15 | Plenary session – R.118 From Industrial Policy to Digital Policy: Institutions and Tools for Digital Sovereignty Chair: Jan Blockx · Oles Andriychuk – EU’s New Industrial Policy for Digital Markets: Do We Know How? · Andres Borja Alcaraz Riaño – Unplugging the Money Machine: Why State Aid Should Not Build Europe’s AI Future · Alice Pisapia – Re-shaping EU’s Competences for Digital Sovereignty · Paolo Recaldini – The EU's Industrial Approach to Data Economy: from the Common European Data Spaces to Digital Sovereignty | |
| 10.45 | Coffee break – R.118 | |
| 11.15 | Parallel session – R.118 Public Digital Infrastructure: Perspectives on Public Procurement Chair: Viola Heutger · Kay-Hilmar Benjamin Hinz – Buy European Cloud: The Legal Development of Strategic Public Procurement in Pursuit of EU Digital Sovereignty · Dionysios Pelekis – Procuring Digital Sovereignty? EU Public Procurement, Cooperation and Competition Law in Federated Cloud and AI Infrastructures · Katrina Polychronopoulos and Felix Zopf – One Step at a Time Towards Digital Sovereignty: Define Goals and then Act · Cassie Jiun Seo – Curation as Governance: How States Assemble “Sovereign Stacks” and What Open Technology Means for EU Law | Parallel session – R.125 EU Competition Law for Digital Sovereignty: a General and Comparative Overview Chair: Nathan Cambien · Alessandro Carpi – The Union Interest Dilemma: Towards a Political Question Doctrine in European Antitrust Law · Thomas Fabry and Cristina Teleki – Digital Sovereignty and Google’s Increased Control of the Android Open Source Project · Behrang Kianzad – EU Digital Sovereignty as Consumer Welfare: A Kantian Limiting Principle for Strategic Autonomy · Anush Ganesh, Jasper van den Boom and Kena Zheng – The Hare and the Tortoise – Appraising the Different Designation Procedures in EU and UK Digital Regulation |
| 12.45 | Lunch break – Agora Café, Grote Kauwenberg 2 | |
| 14.00 | Parallel session – R.118 EU Competition Law for Digital Sovereignty: a Focus on the DMA Chair: Feyisayo Lari-Williams · Federico Ruggeri – The EU’s Ex Ante Model of Digital Market Regulation and Its Limits: A Comparative Perspective · Pavlina Hubkova – Digital Power and Digital Sovereignty: The DMA Viewed through an Analytical Framework Combining LPE and STT · Sebastian Steinert – The DMA’s Role for Europe’s Digital Sovereignty: Uncovering the Cloud Layer as an Infrastructural Gateway · Viktorija Morozovaite – Cooperative Innovation: Towards Addressing the Scaleup Gap in the EU | Parallel session – R.125 EU Law, AI and Digital Space Chair: Pierfrancesco Mattiolo · Dominik Brtna – Digital Sovereignty's Paradox: Extraterritoriality and the Fragmentation of Fundamental Rights in the AI Act · Patricie Startlová – Territoriality Reconfigured: How EU Digital Regulation Remaps Sovereignty in the Age of AI and Platform Governance · Viola Heutger – Reframing Digital Sovereignty: What Remote-Controlled Vessels Reveal about EU Regulatory Power · Akshita Rohatgi – Role of International Trade Secret Law in Constructing the EU Regulatory Opacity of Digital Corporations |
| 15.30 | Coffee break – R.118 | |
| 16.00 | Plenary session – R.118 Public and Private Actors in the Quest for Digital Sovereignty Chair: Wouter Verheyen · Pieter Wolters – Hybrid Conflicts, European Cybersecurity Obligations and Private Companies · Antonino Ali – From Signals to Networks: Intelligence, Digital Sovereignty and EU Law in the Digital Age · Ruggero Rudoni – EU Digital Sovereignty and the Effectiveness of Judicial Protection: Integrating Public and Private Enforcement · Maria Giulia Arciero – US and EU Regulatory Strategies for Data Center Infrastructures: A Comparative Law and Political Economy Perspective | |
| 17.30 | Plenary discussion and conclusions – R. 118 | |
| 18.00 | Closing of the workshop | |
PARTICIPANTS
| Name | Affiliation(s) |
| Adem Çakman | Turkish-German University, Türkiye |
| Akshita Rohatgi | University of Cambridge, UK |
| Alessandro Carpi | Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP (Brussels) |
| Alice Pisapia | Università telematica Universitas Mercatorum, Italy |
| Amedeo Manca | University of Rome "Tor Vergata", Italy |
| Andres Borja Alcaraz Riaño | University of Murcia, Spain |
| Anush Ganesh | University of Exeter, UK |
| Antonino Ali | University of Trento, Italy |
| Ardit Maxhuni | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Camilla Domenighini | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Behrang Kianzad | Malmö University, Sweden |
| Benjamin González | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Cassie Jiun Seo | Independent |
| Cristina Teleki | Maastricht University, The Netherlands |
| Dionysios Pelekis | Utrecht University, The Netherlands |
| Dominik Brtna | Charles University, Czech Republic |
| Federico Ruggeri | University of Bergamo, Italy |
| Felix Zopf | TRABAG group (CML Construction Services); University of Vienna, Austria |
| Feyisayo Lari-Williams | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Floor Doppen | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Jan Blockx | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Jasper van den Boom | Leiden University, The Netherlands |
| Katrina Polychronopoulos | TRABAG group (CML Construction Services) |
| Kay-Hilmar Benjamin Hinz | University of Lüneburg, Germany |
| Kena Zheng | Heinrich Heine University, Dusseldorf, Germany |
| Maria Giulia Arciero | Sapienza University of Rome, Italy |
| Nathan Cambien | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Oles Andriychuk | University of Exeter, UK |
| Omid Jahanbozorgi | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Paolo Recaldini | Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium |
| Patricie Startlová | Charles University, Czech Republic |
| Pavlina Hubkova | University of Exeter, UK |
| Pierfrancesco Mattiolo | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Pieter Wolters | Radboud University, The Netherlands |
| Ruggero Rudoni | University of Turin, Italy |
| Sebastian Steinert | Heinrich-Heine University, Germany |
| Thomas Fabry | Maastricht University, Netherlands |
| Viola Heutger | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Viktorija Morozovaite | Utrecht University, The Netherlands |
| Wouter Verheyen | University of Antwerp, Belgium |
| Yiokasti Mouratidi | Swedish Defence University, Sweden; Utrecht University, The Netherlands |
Organizing team