EU-Canada Week on ICT Standardisation

14-16 October, Online

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Background

The European Union (EU) and Canada have long-established agreements, as reiterated in the recent EU-Canada summit (23/06/2025) , that underpin a strong and forward-looking cooperation for the digital era. These include the Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA), which facilitates trade and investment, and the EU-Canada Digital Partnership, launched to enhance collaboration on digital policy and technology governance. Such agreements reflect the EU and Canada’s shared commitment for a secure, inclusive, and human-centric digital transformation, that will enable them to maintain their sovereignty and competitiveness among technological and geopolitical shifts. In line with the EU International Digital strategy, the European Union will continue to promote its values-based approach on digital governance and digital standards to shape a global digital transformation that is human-centric, trustworthy, and respects human rights and fundamental freedoms.

Ahead of the first EU-Canada Digital Partnership Council, anticipated later this year, tThe EU-Canada Week on ICT Standardisation builds on this strong policy foundation through a series of expert-led workshops aimed at aligning approaches to international ICT standards. Organised by INSTAR, with the support of the European Commission (EC), EU Delegation in Canada, ETSI and CEN CENELEC, this initiative seeks to strengthen the EU and its international like-minded partners’ influence in global ICT standardisation, while promoting inclusive, human-centric, transparent, and interoperable standards.

By bringing together domain experts, industry stakeholders, policymakers and standards bodies from both jurisdictions, and beyond, the EU-Canada Week will serve as a platform for dialogue, knowledge exchange, and joint action. It will reinstate shared priorities, as identified in the EU-Canada Digital Partnership, address standardisation challenges, and contribute to a more harmonised and resilient global digital ecosystem, anchored in democratic values and technological excellence. The sessions aim to identify concrete opportunities to scale up existing and emerging joint initiatives, while laying the groundwork for sustained, long-term cooperation between the EU and Canada.

Themes

The EU-Canada Week will explore standardisation challenges across three key technology domains: Dataspaces, Cloud-Edge-IoT (CEI) and Quantum technologies. Discussions will focus on cross-cutting themes including:

Connectivity
Interoperability
Security and trust

Format

The EU-Canada Week encompasses three thematic workshops (1.5 - 2 hours) delivered online on Zoom provided by INSTAR. These multi-stakeholder sessions will include keynote speeches, expert presentations, roundtables and panel discussions. They will also allow the audience to ask questions and contribute insights via the chat and in a dedicated Q&A slot.

More details and agenda coming soon!