ERS Vienna: Where governance becomes infrastructure

FORESIGHT

ERS Vienna

Where governance becomes infrastructure

European resilience debate shifts
from policy ambition to operational design

European Resilience Summit (ERS) Vienna represents a deliberate inflection point in the European debate on digital sovereignty and resilience. It is not designed as a conventional technology summit, but as a governance-driven intervention into how Europe defines, organises, and operationalises its digital future. In that sense, ERS Vienna is less about showcasing innovation and more about structuring the conditions under which innovation can remain controllable, interoperable, and strategically aligned with European values and dependencies.

TEXT: SANDER HULSMAN IMAGE: VIECON David Faber

The European Resilience Summit series explicitly frames resilience as a systemic property rather than a technical feature. As the programme articulation across the series states, resilience is “more than defence, it is the foundation of Europe’s digital independence.” Within that framing, Vienna becomes a governance anchor point: a moment where fragmentation in policy, procurement, infrastructure design, and operational accountability is confronted in a structured, cross-sector environment.

Governance as central design principle

ERS Vienna is built around a simple but demanding premise: governance is not a layer on top of digital systems; it is the system itself. This shifts the role of the summit away from dialogue-only formats toward what can best be described as “decision architecture development”.

The advisory structure of ERS Vienna reflects this shift. Rather than serving as a ceremonial body, the advisory ecosystem functions as a multi-level translation mechanism between political ambition, institutional constraints, and operational execution. It connects three domains:

Strategic governance where sovereignty is defined in policy terms
Institutional governance where ministries, regulators, and agencies interpret and implement those definitions
Operational governance where CIOs, CISOs, and infrastructure leaders translate policy into architectures, procurement rules, and vendor ecosystems

Across the broader ERS programme, this alignment mechanism is consistently emphasised: resilience is not achieved through isolated decisions, but through coordinated governance across sectors, borders, and supply chains. Vienna is therefore positioned as a consolidation moment: a place where governance fragmentation is not only diagnosed, but structurally addressed.

Europe has strong institutional capacity, advanced regulatory frameworks, and globally respected cybersecurity expertise

Structural problem ERS Vienna is responding to

The European digital ecosystem is characterised by a paradox. On one hand, Europe has strong institutional capacity, advanced regulatory frameworks, and globally respected cybersecurity expertise. On the other hand, its operational digital infrastructure remains highly fragmented across national boundaries, sectoral domains, and vendor ecosystems.

This fragmentation produces five recurring structural tensions that ERS Vienna explicitly needs to address:

Sovereignty vs. operational dependency
Europe’s strategic ambition of digital sovereignty often collides with operational dependency on non-European hyperscale infrastructure providers. The question is no longer abstract: it is about continuity of essential services under conditions of geopolitical disruption.
Fragmented governance vs. systemic risk
Cybersecurity, cloud infrastructure, and data governance are often regulated in separate silos. Yet the risks they generate are systemic. ERS Vienna must therefore confront whether Europe can still govern risk in fragmented institutional structures.
Procurement as a sovereignty instrument
Public procurement has become one of the most powerful, but underutilized, tools of digital sovereignty. However, procurement rules remain uneven across member states, creating inconsistent enforcement of sovereignty principles.
Interoperability vs. vendor lock-in
The European ambition for interoperability often conflicts with legacy systems and proprietary architectures. Without coordinated governance, interoperability becomes a slogan rather than an enforceable design constraint.
National strategies vs. European alignment
Digital sovereignty is increasingly defined at national level, while risks and infrastructure dependencies are inherently cross-border. ERS Vienna must address how these two layers can be structurally aligned rather than politically decoupled.

Vienna occupies a unique role. It is positioned as a synthesis moment between strategic intent and operational execution

From discussion to governance engineering

A defining characteristic of ERS Vienna is its ambition to move beyond conceptual debate. The programme is explicitly designed to translate high-level sovereignty discussions into governance instruments that can be implemented.

This includes a focus on:

shared resilience frameworks across critical sectors
cross-border coordination mechanisms for infrastructure continuity
governance standards for vendor ecosystems and cloud dependencies
and structured alignment between public and private sector operational models

The emphasis is on what can be described as “governance engineering”: the design of systems that make resilience enforceable rather than aspirational.

Why ERS Vienna matters

Within the European Resilience Summit series, spanning cities such as The Hague, Berlin, Paris, London, and Davos, Vienna occupies a unique role. It is positioned as a synthesis moment between strategic intent and operational execution. Where other summits often focus on thematic domains (cybersecurity, AI, infrastructure), Vienna is explicitly governance-centric. It asks a more fundamental question: how does Europe coordinate decision-making under conditions of systemic technological dependency? The answer is not expected to be singular. Instead, ERS Vienna is designed to produce alignment: a shared vocabulary, a shared understanding of risk, and a shared recognition that sovereignty cannot be achieved through isolated national initiatives alone.

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 where governance, infrastructure, and resilience are increasingly converging into a single operational layer.

This is not a forum about policy in abstraction. It is where governance is translated into systems, dependencies, and execution models that define Europe’s digital and institutional resilience.

Programme ERS Vienna

Tuesday, May 12, 2026

9:30 – 9:45 am
Welcome & Opening: From London to Vienna
Philipp Müller & Clemens Möslinger
9:45 – 10:15 am
From Cells to Command: Rethinking Resilience Across Domains
Markus Schmid & Wolfram Weckwerth
10:15 – 10:45 am
Coffee Break
10:50 –11:20 am
The Architecture of Autonomy: From Political Vision to Infrastructure Reality
Panel with Ron De Jonge, Clara Neppel, Manuel Muñiz & Götz T. Wiese
Turning Commitment into Action: A Leadership Dialogue on Resilience
David Blum & Anton Sepper
Doc-Read by Facis
Emma Wehrwein, Lauresha Toska & Andreas Weiss
11:25 – 11:55 am
Shaping Europe’s Cybersecurity Future: A Conversation with ENISA
Hans de Vries
Measure your Sovereignty Level in 30 Minutes
Emiel Brok
Doc-Read by Facis
Emma Wehrwein, Lauresha Toska & Andreas Weiss
12:00 – 13:00 pm
Lunch Break
1:05 – 1:35 pm
Resilience Rewired: Power, Risk, and Europe’s Next Frontier
Panel with Clemens Möslinger, Alexander Pröll, Jörg Leitchtfried & Hans de Vries
1:40 – 2:10 pm
Digital Sovereignty: Why Public Service Media Are Europe’s Hidden Pillar of Cyber Resilience
Panel with Astrid Zöchling, Harald Kräuter, Antonio Arcidiacono, Robin Nachtrab-Ribback & Deividas Graubaskas
Building Resilience by Design: Digital Infrastructure, Recovery, and Human Values
Clara Neppel & Jutta Juliane Meier
Does FOSS Buy Sovereignty? Participation vs. Ownership
Mirko Boehm
2:15 – 2:45 pm
When the Grid Goes Down: Cascading Failure Scenario That Europe Industrial Security Is Not Ready for
Panel with Martin Madlo, Heinz Nusser, Gernot Frauscher & Ralph Sieffen
Doc-Read by Sopra Steria
Ulf Glöckner
Leading EU Cybersecurity: ENISA in Conversation
Hans de Vries & Arno Spiegel
2:50 – 3:20 pm
Coffee Break
3:30 – 4:00 pm
Open Source as Strategic Infrastructure: Enabling a Federated, Sovereign Digital Europe
Panel with Per Krogslund, Mirko Böhm, Emma Wehrwein & Emiel Brok
Doc-Read by Sopra Steria
Ulf Glöckner
Doc-Read by Capgemini
Manuel Höferlin
4:05 – 4:35 pm
From Dependency to Architecture: Designing European Resilience as a Core Political Responsibility
Panel with Simona Milio, Sofie Schönborn, Ulf Glöckner & Astor Nummelin Carlberg
Doc-Read by Capgemini
Manuel Höferlin
5:10 – 6:00 pm
Networking Drinks

We invite you to join this dialogue in Vienna and engage with the practical architecture of European digital sovereignty.

CLICK TO REGISTER

Advisory Board ERS Vienna

The European Resilience Summit in Vienna is supported by an Advisory Board composed of senior policymakers, government representatives, industry leaders, and domain experts operating at the intersection of digital infrastructure, governance, and security. Notably, the board includes a strong representation from the public sector, reflecting the central role of governments in shaping Europe’s digital resilience and sovereignty agenda.

Aligned with the summit’s theme, “Where governance becomes infrastructure”, the Advisory Board provides strategic direction on how policy frameworks, technological capabilities, and operational resilience increasingly converge. Drawing on cross-sector expertise, the board helps ensure that the summit’s discussions are grounded in real-world challenges and translate into concrete, actionable outcomes for Europe’s digital future.

Philipp Amann

Head of Digital Security Division, European Central Bank

David Blum

Defense & Security Lead, Accenture

Johannes Göllner

Chairman of the Board, Centre for Risk and Crisis Management

Klemens Himpele

Chief ICT Strategist, City of Vienna

Manuel Höferlin

Vice President, Digital Strategy & Resilience, Capgemini

Stephanie Jakoubi

Director of Strategic Partner Management, Communications & Events, SBA Research

Ronald de Jonge

Head of Public Sector and Defense & Security, Sopra Steria

Martin Madlo

Managing Director Austria, CTS Group

Clemens Möslinger

CIO, Austrian Federal Chancellery

Dr. Philipp Müller

VP Public Sector, DriveLock

Hannes Pfneiszl

General Manager, SoftwareONE Austria

Peter Reichstädter

CIO / Head of ICT Strategy Department, Austrian Parliament / Parliamentary Administration

Stephan Rodler

Head of IT, Austrian Court of Audit

Wolfgang Rosenkranz

Team Lead, CERT.at & Austrian Energy CERT

Benedikt Schraik

CTO, City of Vienna

Arno Spiegel

Deputy Director Cyber Security, Austrian Federal Chancellery

Katharina M. Schwarz

Head of Global Communications, Myra Security

Andreas Weiss

Managing Director, eco

Astrid Zöchling

CIO, ORF