Sovereignty by Design – How Architectural Choices Determine Who Is In Control

Erik Van Zuuren is Founder of TrustCore.EU, Topic Leader Security Practices at Solvay Brussels School, Security Advisor and Architect at BNP Paribas Fortis, and an expert advisor on Trust Services, eIDAS and digital trust ecosystems for the Flemish Government and ENISA. With more than 25 years of experience, he has built expertise in governance, risk and compliance, trust services, enterprise security architecture, cloud platforms, and information and cybersecurity. He has worked with numerous public institutions and leading private-sector organisations in Belgium and Europe. Erik is recognised as one of the architects behind the Belgian electronic identity card (BelPIC) and several key e-government trust services developed by the Flemish Government. His current focus areas include enterprise security architecture, the implementation of the eIDAS Regulation, and digital trust in the financial sector.

Bart Preneel is a full professor at KU Leuven, where he leads the COSIC research group. He has also served as a visiting professor at five universities across Europe. His primary research interests include cryptography, cybersecurity, and privacy. Preneel has been an invited speaker at over 150 conferences in 50 countries. He received the RSA Award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics in 2014 and is a fellow of the IACR. Preneel frequently consults industry and government on cybersecurity and privacy technologies and has been actively involved in cybersecurity policy debates. Since 2015, he has been a member of the Board of the Cyber Security Coalition.

Renan Choyer has more than twenty years of experience spanning the aerospace, defence, public sector and cybersecurity domains. After spending nine years in the aerospace and defence industries, he joined the French Ministry of the Interior, where he managed large-scale digital transformation projects for eight years. For the past two years, Renan has been leading cloud computing initiatives within the Expertise Directorate of the French Cybersecurity Agency (ANSSI). In this role, he contributes to France's strategy on trusted cloud services, cloud security, and digital sovereignty, while supporting the development and implementation of cybersecurity frameworks for cloud adoption. He is a regular speaker on topics related to cloud trust, sovereign cloud infrastructures, and the protection of critical digital assets

Philippe Merle is Head of Unit of Cloud and Brokering Services at the European Commission (DG DIGIT) and Chairman of the Cloud Council of the European Commission. As of 2014, he has overseen the technical aspects of cloud procurement for the EU institutions and cloud evangelists within the institutions. As chairman of the Cloud Council, he drives the technical governance of cloud adoption.