A Civil Society Summit on Tech, Society, and the Environment

Tech giants Google, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Apple, TikTok, and others spend an astounding €113 million annually on lobbying EU institutions. We all pay the price for this:

• Access to public debates, information, and services is ever more concentrated in the hands of gatekeeper platforms like Instagram and YouTube, TikTok and Facebook, Apple’s App Store, and Google Play.
• Our data is tracked and stored in a myriad of opaque ways that none of us really comprehend.
• Even governments are locked into the cloud and AI infrastructures of companies too big to govern. Our public service providers have to pay billions of euros each year for their products
• instead of spending it on the development of open technologies that respect our rights and support democratic societies.
• With pseudo-programs like “AI for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”, companies try to hide the fact that most of their products are “solutions looking for a problem” that don’t contribute at all to solving global problems. Instead, their enormous energy and water consumption aggravates the climate crisis, they produce dire working conditions, and they concentrate more and more wealth and power in their hands.

We’re looking forward to speakers from across the political spectrum of the new EU Parliament, including MEPs Kim van Sparrentak (Greens/EFA), Svenja Hahn (Renew), Alexandra Geese (Greens/EFA), Aura Salla (EPP), Alex Saliba (S&D), Anna Cavazzini (Greens/EFA), Leila Chaibi (The Left), Dóra Dávid (EPP), Saskia Bricmont (Greens/EFA), colleagues from the European Commission, activists, and academic researchers. Panels include a wide range of topics.

Panel: Digital Austerity: impact of digitalisation of essential Services

The current growing trend of digitalisation and datafication of public services is predicted upon a promise of increased flexibility, cost effectiveness and time gains. However, the forced march towards an ubiquitous digital life comes with multiple negative impacts on our privacy, dignity and autonomy, especially on those of us already experiencing social exclusion, including people living in homelessness, undocumented, migrants, elderly people, people with disabilities or low-income groups. The right to access essential services and equal treatment are no longer guaranteed. Furthermore, the digitalisation of services and social protection schemes comes at new costs, inducing new forms of exclusion. It normalises discriminatory and harmful systems like predictive identification and risk scoring systems, towards systems of surveillance and punishment and away from approaches focusing on care and well-being.

Round table: From Broken by Design, to Building a Better Internet from the Ground Up

As the dominant Big Tech business models often amplify division, commodify our attention and our data, we face significant challenges, particularly affecting children, young people, women, and marginalised communities. How can we create a safer, more inclusive online environment? This roundtable will explore privacy, consumer protection, addictive design, and safety-by-design principles. We will discuss different solutions that have been proposed. What are the concerns relating to smartphone bans for children, age verification and digital security? How do we shift the burden away from the individual and families? Join us as we envision a future where online spaces are safe and equitable for all.

Panel: Breaking Open Big Tech: A positive vision for a fairer digital economy

Is it time to stop treating the symptoms and instead solve the problem of Big Tech power? Join us for an exciting panel that will dive deep into concrete examples such as Alphabet’s and Meta’s power to impose surveillance advertising and use the resulting data dominance for advantages in AI, or Amazon’s ability to exploit smaller businesses and drive prices up across the economy. The panel will also look into discussions about breaking open Big Tech’s power and building an alternative, people-led digital future.

Round table: Making EU laws work for people: best practices for engaging with civil society

In the last few years, the EU has adopted several legislative initiatives critical for addressing the impacts of technology on society, fundamental rights and consumer protection. These include the GDPR, the Digital Services and Market Acts and the Artificial Intelligence Act. Civil society expertise has been vital for providing evidence of harms and concerns and for proposing practical policy solutions. However, the legislative process and the subsequent enforcement mechanisms are often difficult to access and contribute to by civil society, especially organisations representing people affected by the use of technologies. How can EU decision-making and enforcement processes be more inclusive so that they work for people in practice? This roundtable will create a space for exchange between civil society and EU and national institutions regarding lessons learned and best practices related to civil society participation in policymaking, implementation and enforcement of EU laws.

Panel: Exposing the environmental costs of technology: what’s the alternative?

Digitalisation and the 'twin digital and green transition’ are the big promises of our times to bring about new economic prosperity while saving the planet. Yet digital transformation creates significant pressure on the environment and people, from their production to waste and including the substantial energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions emitted by producing and using digital devices. These intertwined social and environment costs remain mostly hidden, and often false and misleading tech solutions to the climate crisis are being put forward - addressing 'future existential harms' rather than current ones. Given that there is no such thing as climate neutral Big Tech and that green growth is unlikely to achieve the Paris Agreement, it becomes clear that a more nuanced and holistic approach is needed.

Round table: Community-based alternatives: a tool to rein in Big Tech and build a healthy online public sphere

Big Tech platforms have long functioned as 'walled gardens', locking people into their toxic structures and promoting disinformation and hate speech through surveillance-based business models. Recent EU laws like the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) have taken big steps to tackle the abusive positions of Big Tech firms, but there is still a lot of work to be done, especially with the rise of AI-generated content. This round-table will explore not only the harms ofBig Tech's business model and how we are fighting back against Big Tech dominance, but crucially how community-driven platforms and services, like Wikimedia and the Fediverse, offer a genuine and meaningful alternative of community-led governance, as well as exploring the major sustaining role of civil society organisations and unpaid activists. The critical questions will be: what is needed for these community-centric alternatives to flourish, and what are the tools that we have – both legislative and otherwise - to achieve a healthier public online space in Europe and beyond?

Panel: Safety beyond surveillance: a rights and justice framework for safety in EU digital policies

The last EU mandate saw a surge of tech and data-driven surveillance, within and at the EU borders, from spyware and mass hacking to migration control and racial profiling, dangerously eroding EU's fundamental rights and values. Instead of pouring resources into surveillance and criminalisation infrastructures, what political responses are needed to address the root causes of social problems? The panel will explore visions for safety centered on rights and justice, away from the current paradigm that prioritizes technological quick fixes and extensive or mass surveillance, which lead to harms and discrimination. To address societal issues at their roots, what policies and public investments would benefit everyone?

Round table: Brussels in the world: platform regulation beyond 2024

Defining the "Brussels effect", speakers will present different angles of understanding the phenomena, tackling issues as Big Tech's varying attitudes towards regulation/compliance across the world, EU officials' interventions in the legislative processes of Global Majority countries, as well as in the context of EU accession countries. In the second part of the discussion we will tackle concrete examples around the DSA.