In December 2025, governments concluded a significant review of global digital cooperation, known as the WSIS+20 review, at the UN General Assembly. It was a test of whether the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) – a process launched by the United Nations in 2003, where states came together to develop a shared framework for governing the digital transformation – still works in a world where the Internet has become a critical enabler of economic growth, as well as a source of risks to the safety and security of its users. At stake were questions about the future of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), how WSIS relates to newer initiatives such as the Global Digital Compact (GDC), and whether governments would reaffirm a multistakeholder approach amid rising digital authoritarianism and ideological differences over how to regulate the Internet.
As the Internet and digital technologies continue to reshape economies, societies, and geopolitics, we talked with Part-time Professor Patryk Pawlak and Project Lead Nils Berglund, who deliver the Global Initiative on the Future of the Internet project at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, about the outcomes of the review and the most pressing concern: have states delivered on their commitment to use the Internet as a transformative force working for the benefit of all people?
What is your assessment of WSIS+20?
Patryk Pawlak: The WSIS+20 outcome document, adopted by consensus, delivered more than many expected. It made the Internet Governance Forum a permanent platform of the United Nations and explicitly links it to a multistakeholder vision of Internet governance. States also agreed on a new implementation architecture. The UN Group on the Information Society will present a joint WSIS-Global Digital Compact implementation roadmap in 2026, while WSIS Action Line facilitators will develop more detailed roadmaps that link WSIS Action Lines to Sustainable Development Goals and Global Digital Compact commitments. A biennial reporting cycle for WSIS implementation has been formalised, and dedicated workstreams on indicators and measurement have been established. These decisions send a significant signal of continuity and commitment in a turbulent geopolitical environment.
Strengthening multistakeholder engagement in global digital governance processes is one of the key goals of the Global Initiative on the Future of the Internet project. Our team followed this process closely and convened a series of multistakeholder dialogues around the WSIS+20 review process in Geneva, New York, and Brussels to bring research and civil society perspectives into the debate. For us, the most important shift is that WSIS is no longer only about principles. With roadmaps, targets, and indicators now on the table, implementation and accountability have moved to the centre of global digital cooperation, and this is where research and evidence become essential.
The WSIS+20 outcome reaffirms the vision of a free and open Internet. But how does that vision square with the reality on the ground, where Internet freedom has been declining?
Nils Berglund: There is a clear tension between the values that states sign up to in New York and Geneva and the policies many of them pursue at home. On paper, the WSIS+20 outcome, the Global Digital Compact, and the Declaration for the Future of the Internet all commit governments to an open, global, interoperable, reliable, and secure Internet that upholds human rights. In practice, Freedom House’s Freedom on the Net 2025 report recorded the 15th consecutive year of global decline in Internet freedom, with conditions worsening in dozens of countries. Internet shutdowns and other forms of network disruption are increasingly used to stifle protests, control elections, and silence critics, with at least 130 shutdown incidents documented across 27 countries in 2025 alone.
A particularly worrying trend is the way governments are targeting the tools that people rely on to keep the Internet open in restrictive environments. Recent developments in Iran are a good illustration of how governments can abuse digital tools to control populations and restrict freedoms. In our project report Tunnel Vision: Anti‑Censorship Tools, End‑to‑End Encryption, and the Fight for a Free and Open Internet, produced with Freedom House, we show that anti‑censorship tools like VPNs have been blocked in at least 21 of the 72 countries surveyed, and end‑to‑end encrypted platforms in at least 17. All of these cases are in countries rated Not Free or Partly Free, and they are often accompanied by criminalisation of VPN use, app store takedowns, and other measures that attack the infrastructure of circumvention itself. These practices sit very uneasily with the commitments to a free and open Internet that the same governments endorse in multilateral fora.
Patryk Pawlak: With a view to the WSIS+20 outcome, this gap between principle and practice is where implementation and accountability come in. The question is no longer only whether we can agree on high‑level language about openness and rights, but whether we can build mechanisms that make it costly for states to dismantle, restrict, or undermine the tools that keep that vision alive.
Since implementation is now the focus, how can one evaluate whether states are living up to their digital governance commitments?
Nils Berglund: This is one of the most critical and underdeveloped areas in global digital governance. The WSIS+20 outcome document is significant because it begins to address this, mandating implementation roadmaps with targets, indicators and metrics, and commissioning a systematic review of ICT measurement methodologies by the Partnership on Measuring ICT for Development, reporting to the Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD) in 2027. But the reality is that we are still far from having a coherent monitoring infrastructure that can track whether the principles endorsed in the WSIS outcome or the Global Digital Compact are being translated into action at the national level.
Patryk Pawlak: Several gaps stand out. First, there is a data gap: many commitments in these frameworks – on digital inclusion, Internet openness, cybersecurity, or multistakeholder participation – lack agreed-upon indicators, making systematic comparisons across countries difficult. Second, there is an institutional gap, as the various monitoring and reporting mandates are spread across multiple UN bodies, with no single body being responsible for pulling them into a coherent picture. Lastly, there is an accountability gap: even when data exists, there are few mechanisms to hold states accountable when they fall short of their commitments.
What is the role of the academic community – including the EUI – in closing these gaps?
Patryk Pawlak: Our project’s contribution to addressing some of these governance challenges is the Internet Accountability Compass. It is an interactive online tool that draws on multiple global indexes and datasets to assess how effectively countries are implementing the principles enshrined in the Global Digital Compact and the Declaration for the Future of the Internet. We developed the first version in dialogue with stakeholders at events such as RightsCon 2025 in Taipei and launched it publicly at the Internet Accountability Forum in Brussels.
Nils Berglund: As the international community turns to operationalising the WSIS–SDG–GDC roadmaps, we think there is potential to further develop the Compass as a contribution to the broader WSIS implementation monitoring infrastructure, helping to identify precisely where the gaps between commitment and practice are widest, and where targeted interventions could have the greatest impact. We are currently expanding the dataset and the information we provide to make the Compass even more relevant in the future.
And what role can the multistakeholder community play in strengthening accountability and supporting the implementation of WSIS+20?
Nils Berglund: One of the clearest messages from WSIS+20 is that multistakeholder participation is a core ingredient of effective digital governance. Making the IGF permanent within the UN architecture sends a strong signal that governments recognise the value of having technical experts, companies, civil society, and academia at the table when digital policy is discussed, even if there are disagreements about how far that participation should extend into formal decision-making.
As implementation moves forward, the multistakeholder community can contribute in several practical ways. It can generate and share evidence on what is happening on the ground, from Internet shutdowns to the impacts of AI systems and content‑moderation regimes, for example. It can help design and test indicators, targets, and tools that make sense in practice. And it can provide spaces where different actors can collectively stress test ideas, surface unintended consequences, and build the trust needed to translate global commitments into national reforms.
Patryk Pawlak: In our own work, we have tried to create such spaces. The Internet Accountability Forum we convened in Brussels in October 2025 brought together policymakers, companies, researchers, and civil society from different regions to discuss disinformation, algorithmic accountability, Internet freedom, and digital resilience, and to explore how an emerging tool like the Internet Accountability Compass could support more evidence‑based debates.
The strength of these conversations lies not in everyone agreeing, but in having the right people in the room to confront trade-offs openly and to identify where cooperation is still possible despite geopolitical tensions.
Patryk Pawlak is a Part-time Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Project Director of the Global Initiative for the Future of the Internet (GIFI). His current research focuses on how cyber and digital policies are shaping the multilateral system and the EU’s role in this process.
Nils Berglund is a Research Associate at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Project Lead in the Global Initiative for the Future of the Internet (GIFI). His work focuses on digital diplomacy, internet governance, and accountability in global technology policy.