On Tuesday, 13 January 2026, the Stars 4 Media Day conference took place in Brussels, under the title ‘Democracy infrastructures, European platforms’, a few metres from the Berlaymont building.
This meeting, organised by Europe Media Lab and its partners under the patronage of the European Parliament, took up the baton from the EU summit in Berlin on 19 November 2025 on European digital sovereignty and focused its attention on the concept of ‘TEPs: Trusted European Platforms’[1], which will be one of the main tools of European digital sovereignty. These are platforms providing Internet services that will target European citizens to offer them an alternative to the currently predominantly non-European platforms, offering all kinds of services: from messaging to social media, from pan-European identification to guaranteed cloud services.
In its conclusions, the Berlin Summit unanimously called on the European Commission to put in place, as soon as possible, tools to support pan-European TEP projects in a wide range of areas, already identifying two concrete projects that could serve as trailblazers: the ARTE+ platform for the creation of an infrastructure for the distribution of high-quality European content (documentaries to begin with, followed by films and fiction) and the seeEU project of the European Public Space Association for the creation of a platform for the exchange of reliable content guaranteed by European public services.
The Commission will use several programmes that are already underway or will be launched soon to provide support for these initiatives. In particular, many of the initiatives will be included in the implementation plan for the ‘Democracy Shield’ programme, which the Commission is due to submit to the European Parliament in the coming weeks.
The aim of the Brussels meeting was to begin identifying what could be considered ‘trusted platforms’ in the media and communications sectors. Several speakers from the European institutions (Commission, Council and Parliament) took part, as well as representatives of potential economic partners. In particular, representatives from the advertising sector pointed out that the current range of “made in the USA” platforms does not meet all the needs of advertisers, who, on the contrary, often do not like to see their products associated with the hate speech and personal attacks that dominate social networks these days. According to estimates by the IAB (International Advertising Bureau), in 2024, €47 billion was spent on internet platforms in Europe, most of which are non-EU. A large part of this investment by advertisers could well shift towards social media offerings that comply with Europe’s fundamental values.
The European Commission – represented by DG Connect and DG Justice – has confirmed its willingness to support the launch of European TEPs in the media sector, as this is an essential link in European sovereignty in the digital sphere, which goes hand in hand with European clouds and the mandatory hosting of data in Europe by companies that are not subject to the legislation of other countries.
The representative of the EBU – European Broadcasting Union – announced that all European broadcasters have already put in place high-performance tools that can easily become the basis for future TEPs. For example, the ‘Perspectives’ project has collected 4 million hours of news produced by European public services, guaranteeing a reliable and secure database. These news items can be consulted online in the 23 languages of the European Union with automatic translators, whose work is always checked before publication by a professional journalist in the flesh. But European public services have gone even further with the ‘Neo’ project, which has fed an artificial intelligence system with this database and can now act as an artificial intelligence tool fed by reliable sources that can answer any questions or develop texts or concepts relating to world news in recent years, in any language of the European Union. These projects would be ideal as a basis for future TEPs…
Representatives from Eurosky and European start-ups active in the field of software and AI emphasised how there is a widespread network of companies, start-ups, research centres and professionals in Europe working with open-source software and taking a completely different approach to the American giantism.
However, the conference was not attended by major European companies such as Airbus, Eutelsat, Leonardo, etc., which work on dual-use technologies, i.e. technologies that can be used for both military and civilian purposes.
The conference conclusions included a call for European institutions to fully support TEPs and to establish a group of experts to conduct a feasibility study and set the criteria that should characterise TEPs. Conference participants also expressed the wish that potential TEP projects be coordinated immediately in order to stimulate the Commission and Parliament and to discuss possible synergies.
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At the end of the conference, the question that remained on the table was how to find a shared definition of what constitutes a TEP. A closed-door discussion workshop was held in the afternoon. There was consensus on a number of distinctive criteria that all future media TEPs should adhere to. Here are the conclusions of this work in English.
Criteria for the definition of TEP in the media sector:
ETHICAL REQUIREMENT:
– No anonymity, access only via EU wallet, zero tolerance against fake accounts
– Trust
o Using only material from trusted sources , digitally signed
o Data protection , respect of privacy, data sovereignty
o Accountability (social responsibility)
o Active content moderation in order to ensure that contents and communications are not infringing the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights
o Respect for age limits in order to access the services of the platforms
o Contents and services respectful of the age of the users
– Contrast to content and communications that are not based on scientific evidence
– Giving priority, visibility and relevance to news and content produced by trusted brands
ECONOMIC AND MARKET SIDE REQUIREMENTS:
– Gratuity of the basic service in order to compete with existing non-EU platforms
– Advertising respectful of EU rules. No behavioural advertising; restrictive rules for political advertising and political communication …
– Marketing of data only in anonymised form
– Innovative services (A.I.-based agents, new services to be used as a sandbox for EU-based start-ups)
– Portability of data across the various platforms (similar to what happens with number portability in telecommunications)
– Language neutrality (questions and answers, as well as content, available in all EU languages)
– Existing platforms on which we can build
– Public Service algorithm (as made by Tik Tok in China)
– Ownership based in the EU (including Golden share against takeovers for start-ups receiving EU or National funds)
– Respect for European governance rules
Short Name is See.EU:
European Streaming News Network
[1] To read more about the concept of TEP reads: https://tepsa.eu/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Editorial-September-2025.pdf