The Metaverse, metaverses, or virtual worlds... Regardless of the name given to the immersive realities that can be experienced collectively and synchronously in digitised environments, the development of these solutions, and to some extent that of their uses, raises broader questions about the governance of tomorrow's internet.

In this regard, Renaissance Numérique recommends:

1. Differentiating between existing immersive uses and possible uses, which all too often have no reality other than its prescribers’ promises. In this respect, it is also important to take a close look at existing regulatory and moderation systems, which already cover a number of possible uses for metaverses.

2. Making legal consistency and enforceability a priority for legislators, particularly for the next European Commission. The possible advent of the Metaverse appears to be a perfect laboratory in this respect.

3. Implementing standardisation and "compliance by design", by incorporating a number of ethical and even legal principles into the standardisation process, in addition to security and interoperability standards. This does, however, require the technical operationalisation of these principles. Operationalisation and auditability aspects must therefore be considered.

4. Developing experimental multi-stakeholder processes (e.g. via regulatory sandboxes or policy prototyping), in order to analyse the relevance of the existing legal framework with regard to the Metaverse, and put forward recommendations relating to the technical operationalisation of concepts such as privacy, the protection of personal data, or the prevention of cyber-bullying.

5. Putting in place agile, multi-stakeholder governance mechanisms to structure every person's rights and duties in tomorrow's internet. The next European Commission should encourage and develop the implementation of this kind of approach at European level.

6. Encouraging online service providers to involve users in the moderation of content and behaviour, and more generally in the regulation of metaverses.