FEDMA ANNUAL EVENT 2023
Brussels, 22 June – FEDMA is 25 years old! FEDMA’s annual event celebrates a quarter-century of continued dialogue with industry, government and regulatory experts.
This year FEDMA’s annual event brought together distinguished speakers from the fields of consumer protection, data privacy, and marketing to discuss pressing issues surrounding EU regulations. The event served as a platform for insightful discussions on the intersection between consumer protection, data protection and DSA, the future of customer engagement, and ethical data use in the world of AI.
Here are some of the insights from our session and speakers :
Denis Sparas (Deputy Head of Unit for Digital Markets, DG for Communications Networks, Content and Technology, European Commission) presented the opening keynote and fireside chat with an insigthful overview of the work of the European Commission on the GDPR and the EU digital agenda.
Our first panel, titled “Can GDPR still fix our problems or do we need new legislation?”, gathered Elzbieta Olkuska (Legal and policy officer, DG Justice and Consumers, Unit B3 – Consumer enforcement and redress), Natascha Gerlach (Director of Privacy Policy for the CIPL), Alexander Hoefmans (Deputy Director at Private Office of the Belgian State Secretary for Digitization, Privacy and Administrative Simplification) and was moderated by Dr Sachiko Scheuing (European Privacy Officer at Acxiom). Together, they explored the responsiveness of the GDPR to current data protection problems, commenting also on the need to work on new legislation.
"There is no question of changing the GDPR for the time being. The e-privacy regulation is under negotiations so the cookie pledge can serve as an interim solution"
“We are seeing an increasing overlap of portfolios – competition law, consumer protection, and data protection. It is not possible to come to meaningful solutions if we don’t work together as a community, amongst the regulators but also with consumer organizations and the regulated organisations.”
A second keynote by Christophe Erregeerts (Head of Innovation & Tech. Marketing at bpost) addressed the relationship of companies in complying with the EU privacy legal framework and provide data opportunities in a cookie less world.
“Be clear about what you are going to do with the data collected. Don’t be scared to show full transparency. ”
In the second panel, titled “Are ethical frameworks just as important as policy compliance?”, Florent Diverchy (Marketing Intelligence Manager, Produpress & Chair of the “Privacy & Ethics” Committee, BAM), Gilbert Hill (Privacy Technologist, MD & Entrepreneur), Jitty van Doodewaerd (Director privacy at DMCC Group B.V) with the moderation by Christopher Combemale (CEO at the DMA UK) examined the relationship between ethical frameworks and policy compliance, and whether one should prevail over the other.
“What if a cookie banner could evolve and be a gateway onto the relationship of trust with brands and particularly to AI? That will be a really powerful way for us to move with consumers into the new era.”
“It is very easy to define what it means to be legal, but what it means to be ethical can be different for a lot of people. Imagine downloading a mobile app and having to read 45 minutes of legal text before it. This is certainly legal, but consumers do not perceive it as ethical.”
“My hope is that moving forward, more and more companies will find a way to implement the ethical question within the organization of their companies. For example, by having a consumer panel or an ethics board, and making them part of a transversal changing process”
The pictures of FEDMA’s annual event can be accessed below:
