The European Broadcasting Union's (EBU) Technical Assembly has agreed on a position calling for the development of sovereign, interoperable, resilient, and sustainable Cloud and AI infrastructure to support public service media across Europe.
The position statement was endorsed by the EBU Technical Assembly, gathered at the EBU Technology & Innovation Summit, 05-06 June, in Dublin. The TA position statement is now being shared with the wider EBU governance community, forming a basis for further action.
At Technology & Innovation Summit, a full session and a panel discussion were dedicated to Sovereign Cloud and Artificial Intelligence (AI) services. The session, which included contributions from the CTOs of Swedish Television, France Télévisions, SWR/ARD and EBU, as well as a guest speaker of European hyperscaler StackIT, showed that several public service media organizations are already pursuing plans to build complementary data centres under their own control, and that there is broad interest in home-grown European commercial offerings. The reasons, widely shared among the EBU community, include increased operational security, unambiguous regulatory authority, and reduced exposure to geopolitical risk.
The EBU invites collaboration from a broad range of stakeholders – including Cloud and AI providers, infrastructure operators, academic institutions, and regulators – to co-create future systems that serve the European public interest. The aim is to support open and secure media platforms that are under European control, while also promoting innovation in areas such as AI tools in production, enhanced systems for distribution and user interaction, and better integration with third-party platforms.
The statement also sets out a series of follow-up actions, which the EBU intends to coordinate through its Cloud Strategy working group, such as the launch of pilot projects and active engagement with relevant European Union programmes and standardization bodies. These efforts are intended to ensure that emerging technologies can be used by public media in a way that is both effective and aligned with the societal values served by European public broadcasters.
For further information and engagement please contact Hans Hoffmann (hoffmann@ebu.ch)