CEIMIA in Action: Spotlight on Our Key Initiatives and Events, October 2025 – January 2026

While the end of the year  2025 and the beginning of 2026 marked a period rich in discussions on intellectual property, regulation and sovereignty for CEIMIA, for GPAI and the Network of Centres for International Cooperation on AI, discussions have centred on human rights, democracy and North-South collaboration. Dive into our summary of the most notable initiatives that quarter.

On October 9, 2025, CEIMIA  presented its latest report of the Comparative Framework for AI regulatory policy series, which focuses on intellectual property. During a roundtable steered by CEIMIA Affiliate Researcher Francesca Mazzi on the intersection of AI and copyright and the different applications across jurisdictions around the globe, the team were able to expand on the topic with 10 experts from startups specialized in in intellectual property as well as legal experts and teams from the industry.

On October 29 2025, CEIMIA and the Network of Centres for International Cooperation on AI participated in the closing panel of the Lisbon Forum 2025 on AI and Global Governance. This edition of the Forum built its discussions on the Council of Europe’s new Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. 

During two days, representatives from international and regional organisations, governments, parliaments, regional and local authorities, civil society, youth networks, and academia from Europe, Africa and the Middle East gathered to attend and take part in plenary sessions, parallel workshops and side sessions to strengthen cooperation between Europe, Africa and the Middle East on inclusive and rights-based AI governance. A special focus was put on identifying and exchanging innovative practices in capacity-building and digital governance and developing actionable proposals for integrating intercultural dialogue and digital literacy into AI-related policies and governance frameworks.

Participants adopted the present Declaration that guides efforts toward a human-centred, ethical and inclusive approach to AI governance across Europe, Africa and the Middle East. 

In November last year, the Network of Centres for International Cooperation on AI attended the GPAI Fall Plenary – the last of 2025. Representatives from CEIMIA, Inria and NICT engaged with GPAI member country delegates and OECD partners to showcase their outputs as well as upcoming projects and continue building the 2027 workplan. Discussions themes included agentic AI, AI Compute, and AI measurement. 

The event was also another great opportunity to reinforce collaboration synergies with OECD, and to mobilize the Expert community around the ongoing work of the Network of Centres.

Last year, November 25th marked the official launch of our “Aiming for AI Interoperability” report and policy guide – the final outputs closing the first phase of the project supported by Google.org. This phase of the project aimed to analyze the current AI governance landscape, its gaps, and how AI regulatory and technical interoperability presents an optimal path forward, to examine four successful and unsuccessful regulatory and technical interoperability efforts in other sectors and use these lessons learned to develop roadmaps for the public, private, standard-setting, and non-profit sectors to move toward AI regulatory and technical interoperability.

• The event gathered innovation, governance, compliance and standards experts from industry leaders as well as academia for a workshop followed by a networking event. During half a day, they discussed three emerging themes from the report: international/provincial/state trade
• AI sovereignty
• Regulatory governance

exploring future areas of work and possible partnerships to continue advancing interoperability of AI. The discussion also highlighted the urgency of AI interoperability and pathways forward through it.

In December, during &Co’s 2026 Trends Day, CEIMIA took part in the panel discussion “Ethical AI, from policy to practice” to raise public awareness of the risks and opportunities offered by AI in business. Alongside Dominique St-Louis (Prompt) and Samira Madagh (&Co), Sophie Fallaha, Executive Director of CEIMIA, gave participants an overview of the main risks associated with the unregulated use of AI at the micro (company), macro (societal), and global levels, and the critical issues that need to be addressed as a priority. The panelists also addressed the issue of bias and gave examples of good governance practices for adopting and deploying artificial intelligence in the most beneficial way for employees, businesses, and society at large. 

In January, we were invited to share our experience and our work at the 2nd workshop to orient the creation of the upcoming Global AI Capacity Development Network – initiated by the UN. The Network would facilitate exchange and cooperation between Centres from the UN Member states to strengthen capacities in several areas related to AI development and deployment. Representing the Network of Centres for international cooperation on AI, we presented the practical tools and projects developed with GPAI.