Bringing together policymakers, regulators, industry representatives, and academics, the event will explore how the DNA reshapes the governance of digital networks by constraining national discretion, centralising selected decisions at EU level, where fragmentation has demonstrably failed. Across two days of keynote and thematic panels, the conference will assess the legal, economic, institutional, and geopolitical implications of the DNA for investment, competition, resilience, and the functioning of the digital single market. 

The regulatory framework governing electronic communications networks and services in the European Union is undergoing an important transformation. With the proposal on the Digital Networks Act (DNA), the European Commission seeks to replace a fragmented, directive-based regime with a directly applicable Regulation aimed at completing the single market for digital connectivity. The DNA would repeal and consolidate several core instruments of EU telecom regulation, including the European Electronic Communications Code (EECC), the BEREC Regulation (2018/1971), the Radio Spectrum Policy Programme, and selected provisions of the Open Internet Regulation and the ePrivacy Directive, bringing them into a single, integrated legal framework.

The proposal is the culmination of a multi-year policy process. It builds on the Commission’s 2023 exploratory consultation on the future of the electronic communications sector, the 2024 White Paper How to master Europe’s digital infrastructure needs?, the Call for Evidence in June 2025 as well as strategic reflections on competitiveness, resilience, and scale in Europe’s digital economy, including the Letta, Draghi, and Niinistö Reports. Across telecom-focused analysis, a consistent diagnosis emerged: while the EECC preserved effective competition and consumer protection, its nature as a directive resulted in persistent national fragmentation, regulatory divergence, and delayed implementation, undermining the development of a genuine single market for connectivity.

This diagnosis is illustrated most clearly by the experience with the EECC itself. Although Member States were required to transpose the Code by 21 December 2020, full transposition across all 27 Member States was completed only in 2024. The resulting delays, particularly in areas such as spectrum assignment, have proven incompatible with the pace of technological change, EU’s ambition for a quick deployment of 5G, and the increasing convergence of telecommunications with cloud, edge computing, and AI-enabled infrastructures. Against this background, the Commission has proposed the DNA in the form of a Regulation precisely to constrain regulatory divergence, reduce implementation lags, and enhance legal certainty for cross-border operations.

The conference will provide a forum for a critical examination of the Digital Networks Act as an exercise in regulatory and policy redesign in response to structural market developments, rapid technological change, and an increasingly complex geopolitical environment.

Through two keynote addresses from high-level representatives of the European Commission and the European Parliament, and a series of thematic panels, the conference will assess how the shift from directives to a Regulation reshapes access regulation, the balance between symmetric and asymmetric remedies, copper switch-off, spectrum and satellite governance, market structure and consolidation, and the governance of resilience in digital networks. The high-level objective is to examine what the DNA changes in the way decisions about digital connectivity are made in Europe, and whether this recalibration of regulatory instruments and competences is sufficient to address multidimensional challenges facing the EU’s digital infrastructure ecosystem.

Practical information  

Invited speakers will be mostly present at the EUI campus in Florence. Participants will also be able to attend the event in person in Florence. The registration fee to join the event in person is €150. The fee covers the cost of coffee breaks, dinner on 28 May and lunch on 29 May 2026. A shuttle bus from the EUI campus to Florence train station and airport will be organised for the registered participants after the end of the Summer Conference.  

The registration fee does not cover travel and accommodation expenses in Florence. Participants of the 2026 CDS course  New trends in digital regulation: AI, data, and cooperation in practice  will be able to attend the conference free of charge. 

The audience will also be able to follow the conference online, free of charge. Please note that online registration is required to receive online credentials.