With the EP’s mandate coming to an end in 2024, many crucial digital policy files are currently in their finishing stages. Many of them have an impact on our democracies. As the influence of big tech companies on many aspects of our lives has brought challenges for our societies, EU policymaking has increasingly aimed at tackling their monopolistic business model. Unfortunately, this has often happened to the detriment of consumer protection, workers’ rights, freedom of expression or our democracy, which is why the EU has reacted with proposals targeting some of the biggest issues in these areas. In the last couple of months (and years), there has been not only significant backlash of (big) tech companies against some of the digital policy related proposals but also from numerous trade associations, think tanks and not so independent academics that oftentimes become secondary channels of big tech influence on digital files. Ultimately, this has led to an unprecedented level of external lobbying on digital dossiers.

This event aims to shed light on these practices and allow also interested people from the outside how lobbying has taken place and how it has affected political work. We envision to have multiple MEPs share some anecdotes working on the respective files and also hear from experts on their experience with tech lobbying over the last years

Agenda:

Panel 1: “Big Tech lobbying in practice: sharing of experiences from digital policymaking”
Panel 2: “A closer look at this parliamentary term: what has happened so far?”

With Greens/EFA MEPs Alexandra Geese, Patrick Breyer, and Kim Van Sparrentak.

Registration: https://www.greens-efa.eu/en/article/event/reclaiming-our-digital-future