153-08 The Future Internet Manifesto:Mise en page 1 17/03/08 10:34 Page 1

The BLED Declaration:

Towards a European approach to
the Future Internet
Current Internet: Success & Challenges
With over a billion users world-wide, the current Internet is a great success – a global integrated
communications infrastructure and service platform underpinning the fabric of the European economy
and European society in general. However, today's Internet was designed in the 1970s for purposes that
bear little resemblance to current and foreseen usage scenarios. Mismatches between original design goals
and current utilisation are now beginning to hamper the Internet’s potential. A large number of challenges
in the realms of technology, business, society and governance have to be overcome if the future
development ofthe Internet is to sustain the networked society of tomorrow.

Future Internet: Vital to continued economic Growth in Europe

In the future, even more users, objects, services and critical information infrastructures will be networked
through the Future Internet which will underpin an ever larger share of our modern and global econo-
mies.It is therefore time to strengthen and focus European activities on the Future Internet to maintain
Europe’s competitiveness in the global marketplace.

A significant change is required and the European Internet scientific and economic
actors, researchers, industrialists, SMEs, users, service and content providers, now
assert the urgent necessity to redesign the Internet, taking a broad multidisciplinary
approach, to meet Europe’s societal and commercial ambitions.

Future Internet: Addressing the Challenges through EU Collaboration & Cooperation

EU member states have already committed, through the renewed Lisbon Agenda and the i2010 initiative,
€9.1 billion of funding, as part of a public-private partnership, for ICT research over the duration of FP7.
However, we must ensure that, within this, continuous and long term support is given to the design of the
Future Internet as a key element of the future networked society. It is of strategic importance for Europe
to fully engage in the conception, development and innovation of a Future Internet ensuring the long
term growth of the ICT sector, full support to an ICT based economy, and the elimination of the digital
divide for all citizens.
The research projects assembled here in Bled represent the first phase of this public-private partnership,
a joint investment of over €400 million, that recognises the challenges above and emphasises a concer-
ted and comprehensive process of redesign, based upon novel network, service, trust, security and content
technologies together with strong initiatives towards new innovations in societal, governance and service
domains, in order to ensure that the Future Internet fulfils its potential.
More specifically, building upon the obligations of our individual project contracts and the goals of the
Strategic Agendas of the European Technology Platforms, we confirm our ambitions include:
Fostering Favourable Conditions through Coordinated Action
•• Coordinate our efforts to foster cross-disciplinary innovation and creativity.
•• Work together through a European Future Internet Assembly of research projects strengthening
cross-discipline activity and optimising the impact of our actions.
•• Cultivate and foster the skills and knowledge required to develop the Future Internet.
•• Create the conditions for the deployment of services and service oriented systems.
•• Communicate through open standards for Future Internet technologies and architectures.
•• Open the European Future Internet Assembly to new projects and actors over time to widen the
coordination and consistency of the action.
Jointly Designing, Developing and Experimenting
•• Services and networking architecture for the Future Internet.
•• Location independent, interoperable, coherent, consistent, scalable, pervasive, reliable, secure and
efficient access to a coordinated set of services.
•• Tools supporting collaborative business models and social network applications.
•• Technologies ensuring the robustness and security of the networks, managing identities, protecting
privacy and creating trust in the on-line world.
•• Approaches and tools to leverage the full potential of the Internet of Things.
•• Capabilities for supporting the creation, sharing, locating and delivery of new-media content.
Increasing Awareness at Policy Level
•• Raise awareness of the economic, policy and regulatory issues as identified by the newly proposed
European Future Internet Assembly, the UN Internet Governance Forum, the OECD and the
European regulatory frameworks.
•• Contribute to the definition of European positions within global forums and arenas.

Call for European action towards the Future Internet

To help us meet these major challenges, we call on the:
•• European Member States to strengthen and coordinate their national R&D efforts and initiatives
toward the Future Internet.
•• European Commission to stress the vision and amplify the related R&D in order to drive Europe ahead
of tomorrow’s Internet transformations in the way we work, live, and interact.
•• European Member States and the European Commission to support the creation and activities of the
European Future Internet Assembly proposed in this declaration.

This declaration is endorsed by the following European Technology Platforms and

European Research Projects*:
eMobility, NEM, NESSI, ISI and EPOSS
2020 3D Media CHORUS FAST N-CRAVE SAPIR SOCRATES
4NEM COIN FORWARD NESSI 2010 S-CUBE SWIFT
4WARD CONTENT INTERSECTION OPEN SEA TA2
ADAMANTIUM CuteLoop IRMOS P2P NEXT SENDORA TAS3
AGAVE DICONET iSURF PanLab / PII SENSEI TECOM
ASPIRE E3 m CIUDAD PERSIST SERVFACE THINK-TRUST
AUTOI eCRYPT II MASTER PetaMedia Service WEB 3.0 VICTORY
AVANTSSAR EFIPSANS MobileWeb2.0 PICOS SHAPE WOMBAT
AWISSENET EIFFEL MOBITHIN PRIMELIFE sISI
CASAGRAS eMOBILITY MOMENT PRISM SMOOTH-IT
CHIANTI EURO-NF NAPA-WINE RESERVOIR SOA4ALL

*Accession to this declaration is open to existing and future EU Projects that wish to actively contribute