This week, together with Andrea Renda, Senior Research Fellow and Head of the CEPS Unit on Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation and the Digital Economy, we break down the Letta report's key technological insights, what is missing from the document, and what to anticipate from the report by Mario Draghi.Enrico Letta, a former Italian Prime Minister, whom European leaders asked to write a report on the state of the EU’s single market, published his findings last week, while former president of the European Investment Bank Mario Draghi's report is expected to be published at the end of June.

Last week, the EU Parliament voted to pass amendments to Eurodac, previously a fingerprints database, along with a new Migration Pact to boost border security.The expansion of Eurodac will see migrants’ biometric data, including facial images, collected and stored for 10 years and exchanged between police and border authorities.This includes children as young as six years old.On today’s podcast, rapporteur for the file, MEP Jorge Buxade Villalba said why he thinks regulation is necessary — and why he thinks it has been vilified be NGOs. In a separate interview, AccesNow’s Caterina Rodelli, said on why she thinks the Eurodac entails mass surveillance for migrants and asylum seekers — and why she that’s a bad thing.

This week we talk to Max von Thun, Europe Director at the Open Markets Institute about competition policy.Amid a barrage of measures and investigations on digital competition in recent weeks, the think tank co-authored a manifesto calling for a revamp of competition policy, including structural changes within the Commission.Crucial to those is a change in culture within the executive, but is it tenable?

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This week, we talk to the European Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly, about the European Commission’s delays in responding to Access to Documents requests, their impact on EU citizens, artificial intelligence, and more.

This week, together with Pavlina Pavlova, Public Policy Advisor at the CyberPeace Institute, we look at cybersecurity issues, such as the 2024 Munich Security Report's revelation of heightened cyber-attack risks, the phone hacking of the European Parliament's defence committee, predictions for the upcoming European Parliament elections, and the United Nations Cybercrime Convention. This week's episode was recorded at the Fundamental Rights Forum, which took place in Vienna on the 11th and 12th of March, organised by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

This week, together with the European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski, we look at data protection issues, including the regulation concerning the detection and removal of online child sexual abuse material, as well as Frontex’s handling of migrants’ data, and the recent news regarding the European Commission's violation of data protection rules in its use of Microsoft.This week's episode was recorded at the Fundamental Rights Forum, which took place in Vienna on the 11th and 12th of March, organised by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

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Together with Katja Muñoz, research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Geopolitics, Geoeconomics, and Technology, we talk about the impact of social media and technology on the 2024 European Parliament elections, TikTok and Meta’s election preparations, the lack of access for data for researchers, and even Taylor Swift.

As the security and resilience of submarine cables became a priority for Europe after the sabotage of a cable between Finland and Estonia in October 2023, EU countries requested the Commission to take action. The EU executive published a recommendation on 21 February, that we are analysing with to our invitee of the week, Louis Obry, public affairs officer at Europacable, the industry association of Europe’s wire and cable producers.

With Nick Ashton-Hart, Senior Director at APCO Worldwide and Head of Delegation for the Cybersecurity Tech Accord, we take a look at the progress of the negotiations on the UN Convention on Cybercrime and the concluding session, which ended with a suspension on Friday (9 February).

With Klaus Landefeld, Vice Chairman of the Management Board at the Association of the Internet Industry (eco), we discuss the outcome of the AI Act and its implications for Germany. One point of discussion is real-time biometric surveillance, which was previously excluded by the federal government in its coalition agreement.

As the United Nations are preparing to adopt the Global Digital Compact later this year, we discussed this initiative with Tech Envoy Amandeep Singh Gill and what it means for internet governance, Artificial Intelligence and the EU’s international projection on digital policy.

As the AI Act’s text is finally consolidate, we tried to put the landmark law in a broader perspective with Luciano Floridi, leading expert in AI ethics and Founding Director of Yale’s Digital Ethics Center.

Joined by Gustav Kalbe previous head of unit for Quantum and now acting director for this research field, we talk about the EU’s plans to build a future ecosystem of super- and quantum computers. This podcast episode also dives into the role of the European sovereignty and standards-setting for post-quantum cryptography.

Since Brexit, the UK Competition and Markets Authority has regained its status as a prominent competition enforcer. As the British Parliament is set to adopt a bill that will increase the CMA’s powers and introduce new obligations on tech companies, we discussed with Verity Egerton Doyle and William Leslie, partners in Linklaters' Antitrust & Foreign Investment practice, the prospects of competition policy on the other side of the Channel, as well as potential tensions and similarities with the EU, starting with the Digital Markets Act.

With Aline Blankertz, Policy and Public Sector Officer at Wikimedia, we have a look at the big events that happened in the areas of data policy and competition in 2023 and discuss the EU's future and biggest challenges for 2024. We also dive into the developments of the Data Act and the Digital Markets Act as well as the EU’s approach to personal health data and data on businesses trade secrets.

Following the political agreement on the AI Act last week, we caught up with Kris Shrishak, a Enforce Senior Fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, and Philipp Hacker, Chair for Law and Ethics of the Digital Society at the European New School of Digital, Studies to discuss the deal in detail.

This week, we talked to MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld who has been spearheading the work of the Pegasus investigation in the European Parliament’s already disbanded Committee of Inquiry to investigate the use of Pegasus and equivalent surveillance spyware.In ‘t Veld told Euractiv that no new Committee will be set up. However, the Dutch MEP is running for another term in the European Parliament and said she will keep pursuing the topic if gets elected again, but hopes that someone will do so in case she will not be elected, too.

The European Commission adopted the delegated act regulating the auditing of algorithms under the DSA last month. We discussed the challenges in this field and possible implications in terms of technical standards and interlinks with the AI Act with Catalina Goanta, an associate professor at Utrecht University, and Jurriaan Parie, director at Algorithm Audit.