Insights from the Living-in.EU Digital Assembly 2025: “Empowering Cities and Regions through Data and People-Centred Digitalisation”

On Wednesday 15 October 2025, local and regional leaders, innovation practitioners and policy-makers gathered under the banner of the 2025 edition of the Digital Assembly.

The theme – Empowering Cities and Regions through Data and People-Centred Digitalisation – set the tone for an urgent and candid discussion: how can cities and regions lead on digital transformation, harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and data, while safeguarding inclusivity, trust and local benefit?

Across the session, several keynote contributions illuminated the path ahead and highlighted the gaps we still need to bridge. Below we summarise the key messages, emerging priorities and next-steps that the Living-in.EU Movement should champion.

Key Messages from the Discussion

The 2025 Living-in.EU Digital Assembly was opened by the two co-chairs: Ivan Goychev, Deputy Mayor for Digitalisation, Innovation, and Economic Development of the city of Sofia, Bulgaria, and Lluïsa Moret, President of the Barcelona Provincial Council and Mayor of Sant Boi de Llobregat, Spain.

Their opening remarks set the tone for a session focused on how local and regional leaders can drive Europe’s digital transformation through collaboration, trust, and a shared commitment to people-centred innovation. Both underlined that cities are at the heart of Europe’s digital future: close to citizens, aware of their needs, and capable of turning policy ambition into real-world impact.

The Assembly featured a rich exchange among representatives from the European Commission, city administrations and innovation practitioners, all converging on a shared message: Europe must be bold, collaborative, and people-centred in its digital transformation.

Martin Bailey from the European Commission opened the discussion by emphasising that Europe needs to overcome its lingering apprehension about artificial intelligence. The EU, he noted, has at times fallen behind because many companies have been reluctant to invest in AI, while global competitors seized opportunities. To reverse this trend, cities and regions must take a leading role — not just managing risks but actively embracing the transformative potential of AI. While the Commission continues to provide significant support, Bailey highlighted the need for stronger local engagement: cities require access to the right tools and an enabling environment to harness AI effectively. He called for a closer nexus between public authorities, businesses, and academia to build self-sustaining, applied-AI strategies — beyond reliance on EU funding. This, he said, should go hand-in-hand with creating a marketplace for AI applications that can be scaled and adapted to local needs.

From a city perspective, Ivan Goychev, Deputy Mayor of Sofia, illustrated how open data can empower citizens and spark innovation. He recounted a simple yet powerful example: within three days of releasing public-transport data, a citizen had already built a map to support police outreach. This, he argued, demonstrates that cities do not need to solve every problem themselves, their mission is to provide the platforms, the data and the enabling conditions for citizens to act. Yet, not all municipalities currently have the capacity to open their data or maintain such platforms, which remains a critical challenge.

Amalia Vrachnou, Deputy Mayor of of Urban Resilience and Regeneration of Kifissia, added that modernising public services also means making them more transparent and participatory. In her city, digital systems now allow citizens to submit and track service requests, revealing bottlenecks and improving accountability. She underlined the importance of interoperability between systems, co-design processes that include students and citizens, and collaboration between academia and business. Her city’s work on sustainable mobility — developing Greece’s largest cycling network, new pedestrian routes and geolocation-based services — shows how data can guide tangible improvements in daily life, while internal digital-skills training ensures that public employees keep pace with innovation.

Jan Wester, Director LDT CitiVERSE EDIC, reminded participants that the technology is largely available: the challenge is to connect it meaningfully. Virtual tools and platforms must be integrated to create real value. He stressed that cities and regions need to collaborate across levels of governance, linking living labs and testbeds, blending skills and involving private partners in a framework of trust. Scaling innovation, he argued, will be impossible without public-private partnerships built on clear expectations, ethical principles and a shared commitment to the public interest. Cities, for their part, must “do their homework”: define how they want to be served, what outcomes they expect, and how technology can best enhance citizens’ lives.

Emerging Priorities for Cities and Regions

From the rich discussion emerged several clear priority areas:

1. Build the AI demand-side and supply-side ecosystem
   • Europe must feed both demand (cities, regions needing solutions) and supply (businesses, research deploying AI).
   • The industrial AI leadership of Europe is at stake; cities and regions must be early adopters, and co-creators of tools for climate crisis, resilience and the green transition.
   • AI-based models can help cities design for environmental change, plan for future shocks, optimise services.
2. Empower citizens and open data platforms
   • Opening data (transport, mobility, services) is a powerful lever when citizens are engaged.
   • Cities should not feel they must solve everything top-down; rather, provide the infrastructure, the data, the tools, the platform for civic innovation.
   • Transparency, tracking service requests, citizen participation (especially youth/students) are crucial.
3. Interoperability, standardisation & co-design
   • Many cities have digital tools, but they are siloed. Virtual technologies must be integrated, connected, and yield measurable value.
   • Interoperability across systems, alignment of data management to national objectives, open platforms to speed decision-making are key.
   • Co-design matters: business + academia + city administration + citizens working together.
4. Scale and sustainability beyond project funding
   • Many projects exist — but cities ask: how do we scale from pilot to deployment? How do we build sustainable business models so that we are not entirely reliant on EU grant funding?
   • A marketplace for applications, solutions that optimise for local contexts, and private-public partnerships (PPPs) with trust are required.
   • Multi-level governance: local, regional, national. Cities must “do their homework” to define needs and articulate demands (so Member States and the Commission can respond).
5. Ethics, trust and public interest
   • Digital transformation is more than technology – it must be ethically grounded, inclusive, just and human-centred.
   • Cities bear the duty to serve the public interest: defining how tech serves people, ensuring digital rights, ensuring no one is left behind.

What This Means for the Living-in.EU Movement

As the political advisory body of the Movement, the Digital Assembly reinforced the call for local and regional voices to be central to European digital & green transitions.

For the Living-in.EU community—and in particular the ecosystem of living labs, cities, regions and industry partners aligned through ENoLL—this means:

• Advocacy: We must continue to raise the voice of cities and regions so that EU budgeting, regulations and programmes reflect ground-level needs for AI, data platforms and inclusive digitalisation.
• Collaborative networks: Strengthen connections between living labs, cities, private partners, universities – enable sharing of testbeds, best practices, operational models.
• Capacity building: Equip cities (especially smaller ones) with the tools, data literacy, governance frameworks, and open platforms necessary to engage.
• Scaling solutions: Move beyond “pilot → pilot” by identifying sustainable business models, marketplaces of solutions, frameworks for PPPs that deliver at scale.
• Ethical standards & citizen focus: Ensure digital transformation remains human-centred: inclusive, transparent, accountable—and ensuring citizens are empowered, not passive recipients.

Next Steps & Call to Action

• Cities and regions should Analyse their demand – what specific AI/data tools do they need, which outcomes they seek (mobility, climate, public services, inclusion).
• Regions should Align their ecosystem: bring together public sector, business, academia, living labs and citizens in co-design and implementation.
• Prepare for the next EU Multiannual Financial Framework: articulate how budgets should be allocated – cities must make their voices heard so the Commission and Member States can debate accordingly (per Martin Bailey’s call).
• Living-in.EU network members should share their own experience, case-studies and tools (for example Ivan’s open-data story, Amalia’s interoperability journey, Jan’s testbed linkage) – make those insights accessible to all.
• Pilot fast, but scale wisely: design for value, connect solutions, think about business models, interop, sustainable delivery (beyond funding cycles).
• Maintain a strong ethical and people-centred focus: ensure that data, AI and digital tools improve lives — not just efficiency metrics.

In Conclusion

The Digital Assembly brought into sharp relief both the tremendous opportunity and the significant challenge ahead. European cities and regions can become leaders in a data- and AI-enabled future — but only if they are empowered, connected, trusted and equipped. When citizens are at the centre, when data is opened responsibly, when platforms are interoperable, and when business, academia and public sector align — then we will see digital transformation that truly serves people and place.

As part of the Living-in.EU Movement, we are well placed to support this journey: through networks, living labs, good practice sharing and advocacy. Let us embrace the future, act together, and ensure that cities and regions across Europe can harness data and AI to build thriving, resilient and inclusive communities.

Thank you to all participants, to our speakers and to the entire network for making the 2025 Digital Assembly a platform for progress.

We look forward to engaging further – and to the many collaborations that will follow.

You can watch the recording of the Digital Assembly here.