ZeMKI Contributions to REMIT Conference Focus on Human Rights and Digital Autonomy

ZeMKI members Dr. Dennis Redeker and Dr. Chiara Spiniello contributed to the 2nd Annual Conference of the Horizon Europe project REMIT (Reignite Multilateralism via Technology), held at Luiss Università di Roma in Rome on 15-16 April 2026. The conference brought together leading scholars and policymakers to discuss the governance of strategic technologies, with a focus on digital sovereignty, geopolitical competition, and human rights.

Dennis participated in the panel “Human Rights and Digital Governance”, as part of which he presented research on the Global Digital Compact (GDC) and the role of the Global South in contemporary digital governance debates. Drawing on interviews with key stakeholders, he examined how competing discourse coalitions shape ongoing negotiations around global digital governance and multilateralism. His presentation highlighted tensions between multistakeholder approaches, sovereignist visions of digital governance, and digital rights perspectives, while emphasizing the growing geopolitical importance of countries in the Global South. Chiara contributed to the panel “Digital Autonomy and International Relations”, which addressed the political and economic challenges surrounding European strategic autonomy in the digital domain. Her intervention focused on the trade-offs and evolving dynamics of strategic autonomy in technology governance, contributing to broader discussions on Europe’s dependency on external technological infrastructures and the need for coordinated approaches to digital resilience.

The REMIT conference addressed a broad range of topics, including AI governance, cybersecurity, military AI, platform regulation, digital democracy, and the geopolitics of technological infrastructures. Across the discussions, recurring themes included Europe’s pursuit of digital sovereignty, the role of human rights in technology governance, and the fragmentation of global governance institutions. REMIT is a Horizon Europe-funded research project investigating how strategic technologies are governed at the intersection of geopolitics and global governance, with an emphasis on the analysis of contemporary multilateralism and its opportunity for future governance. The project brings together researchers from across Europe to develop evidence-based policy recommendations on emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, biotechnologies, quantum computing, and digital infrastructures such as 5G/6G. ZeMKI coordinates one of the work packages (WP3: “Normative Construction of Technology Governance”) of the REMIT project.