The European Broadcasting Union’s (EBU) Technical Assembly has called 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, earlier this month in Dublin.
The position emerged from a full session at the Summit, 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.
It established that several public service media organisations 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 is inviting 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.
It wants 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 standardisation bodies.
