ABOUT THE FORUM

The Forum of the European Minority Regions aims to provide regional authorities with a platform to highlight their minorities – not only to exchange best practices but also to raise awareness of challenges and instances of discrimination. At the same time, it consistently emphasises the undeniable economic benefits that minorities bring, benefiting individuals, businesses, local communities, regions, countries, and the entire Europe. Investing in minorities yields significant returns, as the economic contributions they generate through trade and investment far exceed the costs. At each forum, experts in the field highlight the added value of minorities and their languages in key areas such as tourism, the labour market, digitalisation, cross-border cooperation and, this year, Artificial Intelligence.

Why is it important to organise a Forum on the challenges and opportunities that AI pose to minorities?

AI has the potential to reduce barriers and create new opportunities for minorities, but without careful design and oversight it can also reinforce existing inequalities.

AI systems learn from historical data. If that data reflects past discrimination, then AI may reproduce or even amplify those biases. Examples have appeared in hiring, lending, facial recognition, and criminal justice applications. Mistakes made by AI systems can disproportionately affect minorities if the systems perform less accurately for certain groupsIf minority groups are not adequately represented in the data used to train AI models, their experiences, languages, accents, or cultural perspectives may be overlooked.

Automation may affect some occupations more than others. If minority communities are concentrated in jobs that become automated, they could experience greater economic disruption unless retraining opportunities are available. There are also privacy and surveillance concerns.

AI can create both opportunities and challenges for minorities because it can expand access to resources and opportunities while also potentially reinforcing existing inequalities.

Perhaps the most important opportunity is a greater access to education and information. AI-powered tools can help people access tutoring, translation, literacy support, and career guidance at low cost. This can benefit communities that have historically faced barriers to educational resources.

Artificial Intelligence improves accessibility. AI technologies such as speech recognition, text-to-speech systems, and real-time translation can help people overcome language and communication barriers. This may particularly benefit linguistic minorities.

When it comes to proving the economic added value of minorities, which is the aim of the Forum of the European Minority Regions,. AI can create new jobs, support entrepreneurship, and help small businesses reach broader markets. Minority-owned businesses may use AI tools for marketing, customer service, and productivity without needing large budgets. For particularly smaller minorities AI can provide better public services. When designed well, AI can help governments and organisations identify gaps in healthcare, education, transportation, and social services, potentially improving support for underserved communities. AI can increase representation.

The impact of AI is not inherently positive nor negative for minorities. It depends on factors such as the quality and diversity of the training data, and whether developers test systems for fairness and bias.

It is also important how governments regulate AI. Whether minority communities are included in the design and deployment of AI systems. Government policies are crucial in this respect.

This years’ Forum on the European Minority Regions will be more interactive than previous fora. During the long lunch break the participants will be able to try out AI gadgets, games and projects of different organisations, educational institutions and companies. Participants will be able to experience the different projects they hear about during the conference.

Info

Place and time:
The venue takes place in the parliament of the Canton, Grossratssaal Kanton Graubünden, Hochbauamt, Ringstrasse 10 in Chur/Cuira/Coira, the capital of the Grisons (Graubünden, Grischun, i Grigioni) on Friday the 23rd of October 2026.

Travel:
The closest airport is in Zürich. From Zürich Airport you should take a bus or train to the main railway station (Hauptbahnhof), from there buses and trains take about two hours to Chur.

Languages:

The language of the Forum is English. No interpretation is provided.

Travel, accommodation, meals:

We would kindly ask you to arrange your travel and accommodation yourselves, since FUEN cannot unfortunately reimburse travel and accommodation costs. We do however offer all the meals during the conference.

Fun fact:
This years’ Forum on the European Minority Regions will be more interactive than usual. During the long lunch break the participants will be able to try out AI gadgets, games and projects of different organisations, educational institutions and companies. Here, participants will be able to try out the different tools they hear about during the conference.

REGISTRATION

First Name

Last Name

Date of Birth

Organisation/company/national, regional or local authority

Country

Personal email address

Phone number (office)

Phone number (private/mobile)

Arrive date

Departure date

I will take part

in dinner on Friday night 23 October

I will take part

in guided walking tour of the old city of Chur on Saturday 24 October

Data Protection Agreement

I hereby agree that FUEN may collect, store and process all personal data, documents, pictures etc. that I provide to FUEN for the Forum of the Minority Regions for the purpose of project management.

I agree that FUEN may store my personal data, such as name, address, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, for an indefinite period of time beyond the period of the event in an internal database of the association.

Program

Oct 23 • Friday

9:00 - 9:30	Welcome by the organisers: Olivia Schubert, president of the Federal Union of European Nationalities Chasper Sarott, the president of Lia Rumantscha Franco Milani, president of Pro Grigioni Italiano
9:30 - 10:15	Brief presentation of the minorities in the Grisons Elena Bertossa, Secretary General of Pro Grigioni Italiano Representative of Lia Rumantscha
10:15 - 10:45	Introduction to minorities and artificial intelligence Philippe Gelin, Head of sector – Multilingualism – Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission Guilherme Canela, Director of the multilingualism, Information and Digital Inclusion Section at UNESCO (tbc) Dr Elke Schlote, professor in Multimedia pedagogy at the Institute for Multimedia Production at Fachhochschule Graubünden Giuanna E. Caviezel, member of the PLURILINGMEDIA ad hoc group for Artificial Intelligence
10:45 - 11:00	Coffee break
11:00 - 13:00	How companies promote regional and minority languages with artificial intelligence Moderator: Ladina Schena Céline Geissmann, Director, Microsoft Open Innovation Center Kevin Chan, Global Policy Director, Meta-Facebook (online) Juliana Rebelatto, Lenovo MBG Head of Globalization and ESG Initiative Leader on Endangered Minority Languages Janine Oliveira, Lenovo ED Business Development and ESG Initiative Leader on Endangered Minority Languages Daan van Esch, Minority Languages internationalization for language technology at Google
13:00 - 15:00	Lunch with an exhibition of different AI gadgets Viaggio student game – presented by Ines Honegger and Fiorenza Lanfranchi will demonstrate the. Reference Corpus – University of Pedagogic Studies of the Grisons, ALAS-wings project – presented by Dr Rico Sennrich and Dr Jannis Vamvas, professors at the University of Zürich Idiom Voice chatbot – presented by Dr Curdin Derungs, project leader for the Centre for Public Management from the University of applied sciences of the Grisons A voice synthetizing project – presented by Dr Srikanth Madikeri Raghunathan, an expert in computational linguistics at the University of Zürich
15:00 - 16:00	How different regions use artificial intelligence to promote their languages Moderator: Dr Mathias Stuflesser, Director of the Department or Ladin Education and School Administration, Autonomous Province of South Tyrol Shane Moynihan, Member of the Irish Parliament and chairperson, Joint Committee on the Irish Language, the Gaeltacht and the Irish-Speaking Community (online) Samuel Frontull, Researcher at the University of Innsbruck and Institut Ladin in South Tyrol, Italy Jean Maillard, President of the Council for the Linguistic Heritage of Ligurian (online) Lohitzune Txarola Gurrutxaga, Director the language industry cluster Langune, the Basque Country, Spain Dr Giorgio Iemmolo, professor at the ETH in Zürich
16:00 - 16:30	Coffee break
16:30 - 16:45	Greeting by the president of the Canton, the Grisons, Mr Martin Bühler
16:45 - 17:45	How artificial languages can be an opportunity for minority language communities Attila Rácz, one of the leaders of the IT cluster from Szeklerland, Romania Dr Will Lamb, University of Edinburgh Björn Teir, Secretary general of Svenska Litteratursällskapet i Finland. Moderator tbc
17:45 - 18:00	Conclusions of the first day Sterica Fudulea, Vice president of FUEN
19:00	Dinner

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