Sign Up: A Call to Establish a European Digital Rights Fund in the next MFF

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Sign up to our letter supporting the establishment of a European Digital Rights Fund in the next EU's Multiannual Financial Framework 2028-2034 (MFF), the next EU budget

Letter:

The European Union Needs a Digital Rights Fund

We, the undersigned organizations, call on the European Union to establish a Digital Rights Fund as a strategic complement to existing initiatives on digital infrastructure and sovereignty, aiming to reduce Europe’s dependencies and strengthen its digital autonomy.

This fund, which is inspired by the Open Tech Fund (OTF), would invest in the open technologies, talent, and public-interest innovation necessary to uphold Europe’s core values and policies, including data protection, freedom of information, platform accountability, secure digital participation, and human rights.

While efforts such as the Sovereign Tech Fund address critical infrastructure needs, the proposed Digital Rights Fund would focus on strengthening the user-facing and rights-based layers of Europe’s digital strategy. It would support the technologies and services that safeguard privacy, strengthen democratic resilience, promote information integrity, and enable meaningful participation in digital spaces.

Without sustained public support for rights-preserving, open and sovereign technologies, Europe risks deeper dependence on platforms and private intermediaries who do not share Europe’s regulatory and democratic vision. Moreover, an anti-democratic model of internet regulation and economic development will increasingly take root without intervention that is based on rights, freedoms and democracy. The choice is not among regulation, values, and investment, but about aligning all three.

Why Now?

Authoritarian regimes like Russia, China, and Iran are exporting repressive digital models built on surveillance, censorship, and control. Repressive governments across the world are blocking VPNs, shutting down the internet, and flooding platforms with disinformation while criminalizing dissent and weakening civil society. At the same time, spyware, illegal surveillance, transnational repression and cyber-attacks undermine civil society everywhere. These trends are increasingly influencing the global internet, and pose a growing risk to Europe’s own democratic space and security.

Despite these threats, a vibrant and diverse digital rights movement has emerged to defend human rights in the digital age. Around the world, organizations and technologists are developing alternative tech stacks and tools such as VPNs and other censorship circumvention technologies, encryption services, secure messaging platforms, and digital safety training. These tools are lifelines for journalists, activists, human rights defenders, and at-risk communities. But they are underfunded, fragmented, and vulnerable.

A Digital Rights Fund would allow the EU to take a leading role in developing a tech stack that promotes self-determination and sovereignty as well as promoting internet freedom globally, while bringing concrete benefits to people in Europe.

Why Europe?

A European Digital Rights Fund would be a strategic tool to help the EU turn its digital ambitions into reality and maintain its leading role in safeguarding the internet as a safe democratic space. By focusing on people, principles, and public-interest technologies, this fund would:

Counter anti-democratic, destabilizing, and criminal digital practices of authoritarian governments.
Attract, retain, and grow talent and enterprise in Europe’s open-source and civic tech communities, strengthening Europe’s leadership in ethical and transparent digital innovation. The fund would fuel innovation, job creation, and talent development in Europe’s open tech and digital rights sectors.
Support small and medium-sized enterprises, cooperatives, and independent developers who are building trusted, rights-respecting, interoperable and more environmentally sustainable technologies aligned with European values. This also means not funding energy and water-intensive technologies that are harmful to the planet.
Strengthen privacy and data protection in practice by ensuring the development and accessibility of tools that bring these standards to life for everyday users. The fund would help ensure that European public institutions, civic groups, and communities have access to secure, trustworthy tools.
Offer credible, public-interest alternatives to dominant US-based platforms, reducing Europe’s dependency and reinforcing its digital autonomy.
Advance implementation of key EU policies such as the Digital Services Act (platform regulation), the Digital Markets Act (gatekeepers regulation), GDPR (data protection), and AI Act (regulation of AI applications) by funding real-world solutions that operationalize these frameworks.
Enhance geopolitical resilience and prevent large scale anti-democratic manipulation by fostering a diverse and trustworthy digital ecosystem that people, institutions, and governments across Europe can rely on.

What to Support?

A European Digital Rights Fund, with a cost of around just 50 million euro (similar to the current Open Technology Fund budget), would support digital rights globally through technology, services, and innovation aimed at users facing censorship, surveillance, and digital threats worldwide. It would enable the development and localization of tools for at-risk communities and ensure they remain responsive to emerging challenges to a free and secure internet. Such funds must be conditional on respect for cybersecurity, fundamental rights, and environmental sustainability, as well as including the participation of civil society when making key decisions. Through sustained investment, the fund would empower civil society and help counter authoritarian digital practices by providing long-term support for:

Secure anti-censorship technologies such as VPNs and other circumvention tools that allow them to access information freely without fear of repression;
Encrypted communications and other privacy-enhancing technologies, and encrypted platforms and protocols that allow people in repressive environments to stay connected and protect their privacy and data protection rights;
Applied research to identify threats to digital rights (e.g. censorship methods or manipulation at scale) and advance privacy, security and circumvention tools with particular focus on the needs of users in at-risk environments.
Digital safety services, such as training sessions, user support, threat monitoring, malware detection tools, and more.
Bug bounty programmes for such hardware and software to support their sustainable development/improvement over a (longer) period of time
Standardized information integrity frameworks that enable the industry to work collectively while safeguarding data ownership and traceability- especially with regards to AI training.

Next Steps

Europe has articulated a strong vision to empower businesses and people in a human-centered, sustainable way via initiatives such as the Next Generation Internet initiative. A Digital Rights Fund would guarantee that these commitments are not only regulatory goals, but lived realities for European citizens and Europe’s civil society allies across the globe. We are ready to support this initiative, and to work alongside complementary efforts that reinforce digital autonomy and grow a resilient, rights-based European tech ecosystem.

Signatories:

Access Now - www.accessnow.org

ARTICLE 19 - www.article19.org

ASL19 - asl19.org

China Digital Times - chinadigitaltimes.net

Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) - https://cipesa.org/

Derechos Digitales - https://www.derechosdigitales.org/

DOXA - doxa.team

European Center for Not-For-Profit Law - ecnl.org

European Digital Rights (EDRi) - edri.org

European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN) - https://efcsn.com/

EFN, Electronic Frontier Norway - efn.no