FORESIGHT
When broadcasting becomes critical infrastructure
Public Service Media as Europe’s hidden pillar of cyber resilience
Critical infrastructure in Europe is no longer defined solely by power grids, telecom networks, or cloud systems. The real battleground of resilience has shifted into something less visible, but strategically more decisive: trust. Public Service Media (PSM) sit at exactly that intersection.
TEXT: SANDER HULSMAN IMAGE: EBU Alma Bengtsson
As Europe prepares for the European Resilience Summit in Vienna on 12 May 2026, this shift becomes impossible to ignore. The summit coincides with one of the most complex live media operations in the world: the Eurovision Song Contest 2026. On the very same day as the first semi-final, Europe’s most visible cultural broadcast system becomes, unintentionally, a live demonstration of continental-scale digital interdependence. This is not coincidence. It is exposure.
Eurovision is not a television programme. It is a real-time, cross-border media infrastructure: multi-jurisdictional distribution, instantaneous audience interaction, and synchronized voting systems operating across dozens of national environments. It is precisely this kind of system that reveals whether Europe’s digital sovereignty is operational, or merely declarative.
Core system risks
For years, cybersecurity in Europe has been framed as a technical discipline: perimeter defense, endpoint protection, threat detection, system resilience. That framing is now structurally insufficient. The dominant risks no longer originate solely within infrastructure layers. They propagate through the information those systems deliver. Large-scale disinformation operations, synthetic media generated at industrial scale, and AI-driven manipulation of perception are no longer adjacent threats. They are core system risks.
Public Service Media are no longer peripheral actors in the media ecosystem. They are structural components of Europe’s resilience architecture
This collapse of boundaries exposes a critical blind spot: cybersecurity and information integrity are still treated as separate domains, despite operating as one continuous attack surface. The implication is fundamental. A system can be technically uncompromised and still functionally destabilized if trust in its output is eroded at scale. Public Service Media operate directly inside this convergence zone. They are not just distributors of information. They are real-time arbiters of credibility in national and European information spaces.
PSM as trust infrastructure
At the European Resilience Summit in Vienna, a central proposition is brought into focus: Public Service Media are no longer peripheral actors in the media ecosystem. They are structural components of Europe’s resilience architecture. Their function extends beyond communication. It extends into stabilization.
In moments of uncertainty, crisis, or informational overload, they serve as reference points for verified reality at scale. This positions them not simply as media organizations, but as operational trust infrastructure embedded within democratic systems.
Dedicated panel discussion
Against this backdrop, the European Resilience Summit in Vienna brings together senior leaders from Europe’s public broadcasting ecosystem to examine how these dynamics are reshaping the role of Public Service Media. A dedicated panel discussion will focus on the intersection of cybersecurity, democratic stability, and information integrity in an increasingly AI-driven media environment.
The panel convened in Vienna reflects this reality through a deliberately layered composition of institutional perspectives spanning national broadcasters and European coordination bodies. The session titled “Digital Sovereignty: Why Public Service Media Are Europe’s Hidden Pillar of Cyber Resilience” explores how this role is evolving in practice. The panel brings together senior leaders from across Europe’s public broadcasting ecosystem:
Antonio Arcidiacono (CTO & CIO at European Broadcasting Union (EBU))
Deividas Grabauskas (Head of Technical Division at LRT, Lithuania)
Harald Kräuter (Director for Technology and Digitalization at ORF, Austria)
Robin Ribback (Funding Manager (Partner Management) at SRG SSR, Switzerland)
Moderated by Astrid Zöchling (CIO at ORF)
Together, they represent a cross-section of Europe’s public media infrastructure, both national and supranational.
Transnational trust and coordination network
The central operating principle emerging from the discussion is unambiguous: European resilience cannot be achieved through fragmentation. It must be constructed through coordination. The role of the European Broadcasting Union is pivotal in this architecture. As a transnational trust and coordination network, it enables alignment across technical standards, operational protocols, and crisis response mechanisms within Europe’s public broadcasting ecosystem.
Yet its significance extends beyond interoperability. It represents a structural shift in how sovereignty itself is understood. In this model, sovereignty is not defined by independence from external systems. It is defined by the ability to maintain control and continuity within shared systems of dependency. Cooperation is not the opposite of sovereignty. It is its enabling condition.
Operationally revealing
The convergence of the European Resilience Summit with the Eurovision Song Contest 2026 is more than symbolic alignment. It is operationally revealing. Eurovision operates at a scale that few media infrastructures in the world can match: simultaneous cross-border broadcasting, synchronized digital engagement, and real-time voting systems operating under extreme visibility conditions. But scale is only part of the equation. Complexity is the real factor.
As the event becomes increasingly embedded in digital ecosystems, platform distribution layers, and data-driven audience systems, its exposure to hybrid threats increases in parallel. Cyber interference. Coordinated disinformation. Synthetic media manipulation. Algorithmic amplification dynamics. These are no longer theoretical vulnerabilities. They are systemic conditions of modern live media environments.
In this sense, Eurovision functions as a live resilience laboratory for Europe: a system under constant pressure that reflects the maturity, or fragility, of its underlying infrastructure.
Resolving this paradox will not come through decoupling or isolation. It will emerge through systemic redesign
The sovereignty paradox
Across all strategic discussions in Vienna, one structural contradiction remains unresolved. Public Service Media are expected to function as anchors of trust in European democracies. Yet their operational foundations are increasingly dependent on global digital ecosystems they neither control nor fully govern. This dependency is not incidental. It is architectural. It spans hyperscaler infrastructure, content delivery networks, platform distribution systems, and AI-enabled production environments increasingly embedded in editorial workflows. The result is a sovereignty paradox: responsibility for democratic resilience is increasing, while control over enabling infrastructure is dispersing. Resolving this paradox will not come through decoupling or isolation. It will emerge through systemic redesign: shared infrastructure models, coordinated governance frameworks, European standards for AI in media systems, and sustained investment in institutional digital literacy.Vienna as inflection point
The panel at the European Resilience Summit in Vienna does not attempt to resolve these tensions. Its purpose is sharper: to define them with precision. What does sovereignty mean inside a federated media system? How is information integrity maintained when production is increasingly automated? Where must human control remain structurally non-negotiable? And how can cooperation evolve from aspiration into operational architecture? These are no longer conceptual questions. They are design constraints shaping Europe’s digital future.
Visit ERS Vienna
The European Resilience Summit in Vienna on 12 May 2026 brings together policymakers, infrastructure leaders, technology executives, and media organizations at a moment of accelerating systemic convergence.
This is not a conference about resilience as a concept. It is a working environment where resilience is treated as an operational discipline; across infrastructure, governance, and information systems.
We invite you to join this conversation in Vienna and contribute to shaping Europe’s next phase of digital sovereignty and democratic resilience.