FGI France 2021 (French Internet Governance Forum) — In-Depth Report: Minutes Digest & 3-Line Summary

The 3-Line Summary

1. FGI France 2021 ran as a year-round series of workshops, closing with plenaries in Paris on 25 November that gathered the heads of France's three key regulators — Arcep, CNIL and CSA.
2. Two headline themes: how regulators should cooperate on the EU's then-pending DSA, DMA and AI Act, and Europe's place in internet governance. The year's workshops also tackled internet resilience and cybersecurity.
3. It shows a national IGF evolving from a one-day event into a year-round dialogue whose workshop proposals feed the global IGF — a working model other national initiatives can borrow.

Welcome — this is the Japan IGF Support Organization. This in-depth report on FGI France 2021 (French Internet Governance Forum) draws on official outputs, session records and on-site reporting. In a hurry? The three lines above and the diagrams carry the gist.

📍 The 2021 edition was not a single-day conference: a year-round series of 'Ateliers de l'Avenir Numérique' (Digital Future Workshops), mostly online due to the pandemic, closed with in-person plenaries in Paris on 25 November

Conference at a Glance (from official records)

(See the source list at the end of this article.)

Discussion Digest — from the Session Records

Key exchanges extracted from session records and transcripts.

1. Implementing Europe's Platform Rules — DSA, DMA, AI Act and Regulator Cooperation

Sessions: Closing plenary round table 1: "Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, AI Act… what cooperation with regulators" (25 November 2021)

• With the DSA, DMA and AI Act still under negotiation, the heads of France's regulators — Laure de la Raudière (Arcep), Marie-Laure Denis (CNIL) and Roch-Olivier Maistre (CSA, which became Arcom in 2022) — discussed how their authorities should cooperate [1][2]
• The session underscored, from the regulators themselves, that platform regulation cuts across the traditional silos of telecoms, data protection and audiovisual content [1][2]

2. Europe's Place in Internet Governance — Stocktaking on the Eve of the Global IGF

Sessions: Closing plenary round table 2: "Europe's place in internet governance" (25 November 2021)

• Representatives of the European Commission and ICANN joined France's digital ambassador Henri Verdier to debate how Europe should engage in the international governance of the internet [1][2]
• An opening segment, 'From FGI 2021 to FGI 2022', saw Afnic, Renaissance Numérique and partners chart the return to a full-format forum the following year [1][2]

3. A Distributed Forum Experiment — Year-Round Workshops on Resilience and Cybersecurity

Sessions: 'Ateliers de l'Avenir Numérique' (Digital Future Workshops) series, 2020–21

• Instead of a single-day event, the pandemic-era forum ran workshops throughout the year — each designed as a multistakeholder dialogue producing concrete proposals to be fed into the global IGF [3][4]
• A workshop co-organised by Arcep and Afnic, 'The French internet: between resilience and cybersecurity challenges', held two panels: 'Internet resilience, towards societal resilience?' and 'Cybersecurity, towards a new digital sovereignty?' [3][4]
• Participatory formats such as 'Experimenting with Internet Governance' invited citizens to learn how governance actually works [3][4]

Three-Minute Short Talk — Your Questions Answered

Q. What kind of meeting was this?

A. France's national Internet Governance Forum. In 2021, because of the pandemic, it ran as a year-round series of workshops rather than a one-day conference, closing with plenaries in Paris on 25 November.

Q. What was the highlight?

A. The closing plenary brought together the heads of France's three key regulators — Arcep (telecoms), CNIL (data protection) and CSA (audiovisual) — to discuss how to cooperate on the EU's incoming DSA, DMA and AI Act.

Q. Why should I care?

A. The EU rules debated here were later adopted and now shape how platforms operate worldwide. National IGFs like this one are where citizens get to scrutinise such regulation before and after it lands.

What Is France IGF? (for first-time readers)

France IGF is a National or Regional IGF Initiative (NRI), aligning local internet governance discussion with global IGF principles.

Why It Matters to You

What was discussed here becomes the baseline for national digital policy, platform rules and AI regulation worldwide within a few years. The principles confirmed at the 2021 meeting are the foundation of the "next rules" for the phones, social platforms and AI services you use every day.

Sources & References

1. Plénières de clôture du FGI France 2021 — Internet Society France (accessed 2026-07-11)
2. FGI France 2021 : plénières de clôture — Afnic（アジェンダ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
3. Atelier FGI « Internet français : entre résilience et enjeux de cybersécurité » — Afnic（アジェンダ） (accessed 2026-07-11)
4. FGI France & Ateliers de l'Avenir Numérique — Internet Society France (accessed 2026-07-11)
5. FGI France 公式サイト（沿革・アーカイブ） — igf-france.fr (accessed 2026-07-11)

Quotes are translated or condensed from the records listed above. Bracketed numbers [n] refer to the source list.

Related links

• IGF official (NRI list): https://www.intgovforum.org/en/content/national-and-regional-igf-initiatives
• Japan IGF: https://japanigf.jp/
• Yuki Nakazawa's blog: https://nkzw.jp/category/igf/

Revision History

Rev. 1 — published 25 October 2021, 14:00 (Article published)

Rev. 2 — updated 16 July 2026, 20:09 (Fully revised into the in-depth edition: added the 3-line summary, minutes digest, short talk, source list and diagrams (all quotes verified against the listed sources))

— 中澤祐樹