[Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
ladies and gentlemen
please welcome the moderator of the
first habsburg stage session
tyson barker
[Music]
all right hello everybody
and welcome to the start of the day the
start of the habsburg
uh conference room i am delighted to
have you guys here i'm tyson barker from
the german council on foreign relations
and we are going to be talking about
transatlantic tech today and i think
there are very few issues that could be
more timely especially given the fact
that
we are just at this exact moment in
brussels
a usu summit is taking place president
biden
is meeting with the leaders of the eu to
discuss exactly these issues
so what we want to do today is give you
guys a little preview of what we think
they should be discussing and what might
be on the agenda
um i think we're all aware that when the
u.s delegation came to europe they
highlighted what they called the three
c's
as their priorities covid china and
climate
but i want to add three more c's to that
uh to to round it out
i want to add uh connectivity commerce
and cyber
and i think that all three of these c's
which deal with the the digital agenda
are enabling of the rest of the
transatlantic agenda generally
and what we want to see in a democratic
world order
um we had this meeting at the g7 there
was some discussion around
uh digital technology and specifically
countering
ict and the belton road initiative at
nato yesterday they announced
new work on emerging disruptive
technologies
uh and today they're going to be
launching what we assume
will be a trade and tech council to
really delve into these issues
and a question that i have you know
looking at the rule book that the
european commission is planning is are
we looking at perhaps the hidden g2
for democratic tech and to answer that
question
we have four excellent speakers with us
here with me today on the stage is fran
burwell
uh fran came to us from the united
states so welcome fran to
to slovakia into europe fran
is a distinguished fellow at the
atlantic council and a senior director
at mclarty associates
and then joining us virtually we have
three additional speakers we have anna
michelle
asimakopoulou who is a member of the
european
parliament from the epp group from
greece
she is also the vice chair on the
committee for international trade
and a member of the special committee on
artificial intelligence
in the digital age so thank you anna
michelle for being with us virtually
third we have anna fiedler fielder
she is the president of edri in brussels
and she has been working on digital
rights for a number of years she's
really
was present at the creation of a lot of
discussions around digital rights
privacy and data protection
she is currently a senior policy advisor
and
chair emeriti of privacy international
and was a senior
advisor to the transatlantic consumer
dialogue and really put these issues
on the consumer the transatlantic
consumer dialogues
agenda at the inception of this dialogue
in 1998. so welcome anna thank you for
joining us remotely as well
[Applause]
and last but not least we have marta
poshlad
larta is the head of public policy and
government relations
for central and eastern europe and the
transatlantic policy lead
at google she is also a humanity in
action senior fellow
an aspen institute young leader and an
alumnus of the helsinki foundation
for human rights program welcome marta
thanks for joining us as well
thank you for having me today today all
right so i'm gonna go ahead and start
with fran so we've got this this big
idea this transatlantic trade and tech
council
a lot of uh wish lists out there for
what should be on the agenda
what do you think should be the
priorities how do you scope this type of
council well i think it's a good
initiative first i mean i think it's an
important initiative because it's time
for the us
and for the eu to talk together on these
particular
issues however there is a long history
of dialogues councils between the united
states and the eu
fading into obscurity and we don't want
that to happen
i think the number one important point
is simply to put these items
in a more prominent place in the agenda
this
is a major transatlantic
market and just to give you one data
point
uh the united states companies
they supply about
200 billion dollars worth of information
services
in europe compared to 3.5 billion in
china
21 billion in latin america so just so
you see what a what a market
the transatlantic market is so it's
important to address that in a sustained
continuing manner and to get policy
makers to actually
talk about these things we do suspect
that the the
first priority of this will be the easy
priority the
the thing on which we already agree
which is
more resilient infrastructures uh
security
cyber security standards and all of
these types of things that
we both the united states and europe see
as important for our digital economies
so a very positive agenda on that
however it's the trade and tech council
and there's clearly at least in the
documents that have been leaked so far
they're clearly and in the reports that
have emerged there clearly is an element
of keeping trade in this
in this uh council and it's not clear to
me
that these two agendas if we want to
talk about
trade barriers and things like that it's
not clear to me that they
mesh well together but we'll have to see
it's also not clear that the
trade and tech council has a mandate
right now to talk about some of the more
challenging issues such as competition
policy
privacy and some of the other many
challenging issues that we find for
example in trying to
restore data trend or in trying to
reassure
companies about data transfers between
the united states and
the eu so there are a lot of issues
we're not quite clear
if they're going to be covered in this
we'll have to see we're not quite clear
who's going to lead it and whether they
will have
the required ability to reach throughout
the u.s government and throughout the
commission and the eu
to bring forces together to have a
really constructive discussion
but it's an important step forward we
should all give everyone a big round of
applause for doing this
and now uh we'll have to see how it
develops
thanks so much for that that opener anna
michelle you're watching this from the
european parliament
you are in the uh both in the trade
committee uh
very senior role in the trade committee
and in the ai committee
uh one of the big issues that keeps
coming up in these conversations is
technical standards and a lot of the
leaks that have come out already
talk about standard setting convergence
the role of the us and eu working
together to really set these standards
where do you see potential here and
where do you see pitfalls
well tyson first of all thanks for
having me it's great to be discussing
this really important topic with such
distinguished company
um you you mentioned the three c's uh i
think we're now waiting for the three ds
we're waiting for the leaders to deliver
and we're waiting for a deal and we're
waiting for them to do what is necessary
frankly to make sure that they safeguard
what i call democracy 2.0
um so having said that i agree that you
know we're waiting for this uh trade and
tech council
it's definitely a move in the right
direction it'll definitely be dealing
with these issues
this is what i expect to be on the table
ai cyber
um standards across the board even for
pharmaceuticals for example
um clearly we also need to deal with
quantum computing so these these are the
issues i would see there and
of course we expect some solutions for
example for
one of the one for srem ii i mean i
understand that this is a difficult
issue
i understand um the legal aspects of it
but quite frankly i think that we need
to find a short-term solution that will
provide at least some sort of certainty
legally
to industry after all we're talking
about a trillion euros a year worth of
uh commerce of which data is sort of a
lifeblood so
we need some certainty even if we
proceed in a
more multilateral context for a longer
term solution
now on the trade aspects delighted to
see that
vp dumb brusque has just tweeted that
there's a deal on
on airbus and boeing from what i
understand this is sort of a five-year
moratorium
until we can figure out how to deal with
this and how to deal with subsidies
across the board maybe with china
as well so that's definitely
good news it certainly shows that there
is
a will and frankly when where there is a
will
there is a way and that goes for
steel as well because this is a big
issue for the eu
i mean you can't really say we're
partners and in nato and that we're a
threat to national security so um
232 safeguards and standards uh
steel tariffs need to need to be
addressed at some point with respect to
trade
now i agree that we don't want this
council to turn into just you know
another discussion forum it sounds to me
like
because of the high level leadership um
it's going to be something that has lots
of potential to progress
and in order to do so we need i think
a strict timetable set deliverables
and we need to put our priorities to get
our priorities straight
and our priorities definitely have to be
around
common standards the european union is
now has an
ai act on the table i don't see why that
can't be an excellent starting point for
a discussion
and in the trade sector i think we need
to talk about supply chains
these are issues that affect both of us
uh resilience
and diversification of supply chains we
need to talk about semiconductors we
need to talk about critical raw
materials
if we're going to deal with uh climate
change effectively in our digital
transformation so
i think i'll stop at that it's an
ambitious agenda
but it's an essential agenda and
i'll just say that what we need to be
doing more than
ever now is burying the hatchet and
and focusing on what brings us together
and not on what
could set us apart thanks so much anna
michelle
anna uh anna michelle mentioned where
there's a will there's a way
and fran mentioned some of the the tough
issues the sticky issues one of which
was privacy
shield anna michelle mentioned shrems ii
the decision
clearly we have a lot of uncertainty
right now in the transatlantic personal
data flow space
what do you see as the likelihood that
we can get to a solution
on a new privacy shield to create
certainty for transatlantic data flows
and what do you think
needs to happen to get there
well first of all thank you very much
for having me at this important meeting
just to clarify edri stands for european
digital rights which is
europe's sole community for digital
rights advocates we have about 45 member
organizations
your important questions i largely agree
with
fran's analysis and data flows and the
privacy shield is the elephant in the
room that needs to be addressed
however as sure if there is a new
privacy shield assurance night comes
after day there will also be a shrems
number three so
as a digital rights community we think
that really
the only long-term solution is for the
u.s
to modify its events laws and practices
because that's what the cgiu judgement
was based on
this is not just our opinion about three
days ago or so
vice president vera eurover said exactly
the same
thing in a in a public meeting
she said pass new laws if you want data
transfer
deal um so that's very important
but also uh last but not least
you've got the whole u.s digital rights
community
consumer groups and digital right groups
are all agreeing that
having an effective federal level
privacy legislation
it's not just good for you consumers
it's what the u.s
people want as well and have wanted for
many years in fact a coalition of them
have recently written to president biden
require requiring such laws to be
implemented
in 2019 there were no less than
11 data protection privacy law proposal
proposals in the u.s congress none of
them have been
implemented so far we assume because
there is no will in the senate to
support it
uh so you know that is the long term
uh viable solution
i'll stop now i have a lot to add on the
rest of the agenda which is by the way
very welcome and timely
thank you thanks so much anna marta
as as anna mentioned this is a pretty
broad agenda and you know
when you talk about tech policy these
days you're just really talking about
policy because
tech touches on everything digital
touches on everything
and one of the things that it touches on
is is the strategic
orientation that europe wants to create
and they have created a term
uh that is used often in brussels in
paris and berlin
which is digital sovereignty and i want
to ask you
what does what do you see under this
term how does central europe work with
this term
and how what does this mean for the
transatlantic digital relationship this
idea of digital sovereignty
thank you so much tyson uh hello
everyone uh it's great to be here and
first of all i would just like to
recognize how
um how great this is that we're in an
almost all female panel on transatlantic
issues doesn't happen very often so well
done
uh to the to the organizers especially
on this um
very special day of the eu us uh summit
that is happening
in the background or actually has just
um concluded
um thank you for your great question on
on on
um on strategic directions europe wants
to take
um over say past 18 months we've
we've heard different concepts different
interpretations
be it strategic autonomy sovereignty
digital
sovereignty and i would say that uh
looking at the
sequence of what happened in the past uh
few days with the president biden's
uh visit to g7 uh nato conversations
yesterday
i think there are foundations to start
looking into strategic interdependence
my view is that no matter how you
interpret digital sovereignty still
a more negative take could be uh taking
um out of that uh discussion and i
honestly feel that after
a few or three years of the
transatlantic uh relationship
and looking at the commitments already
made throughout the past
five days uh interdependence is what we
should be looking at
recognizing everything that both sides
bring to the table
or more sites when you look at broader
forms like
g7 but i think if there is one
commitment
that stands out from all the summits
that have taken
uh place uh is a joint recognition of
global threats
and needs to work um together
and that should be uh and and that
should be the
the takeaway together with everything
that uh my other co-panelists uh brought
up they're very concrete
uh things of the on the table be it
trade
uh issues one an erased uh or private
shield
than than that other um a race what i
would add to the mix
um is that i truly believe that if we
want
ttc to be a meaningful tool we should
already look
uh into what is being discussed on both
sides of the atlantic like for example
dsa
and dma in europe that would have a
significant transatlantic
effect would have a global effect on how
technology uh
works and that's where we would see uh
meaningful outcomes um of the of the ttc
and i think when it comes to centro and
eastern europe in specific and a take on
strategic
um strategic um
beat autonomy or digital uh sovereignty
i i would say that
there is probably kind of a distinction
when it comes to
take the takes of of governments uh in
this region and i think that comes from
um from uh that that is for two
reasons one is historical and
and the role of the us uh in in
shaping post-communist uh countries and
and
and probably a greater openness uh to
seek diversity of
for in this case um tech supply
and uh and the second reason um to it
is this hunger for catching up and
leapfrogging and seeking
all possible um opportunities uh
globally
um to really get the best access uh to
solutions be
beat within tech or other um industries
and i could only wish that
uh this part of europe would be will be
playing an even more significant role in
the debate of
on on future strategic directions
thanks so much marta uh we're going to
do another round and i want to mention
now
that we're going to open it up for
questions there are three ways that you
guys can ask
questions we have an audience here we're
back in
we're slowly edging into post-covet
times and we do have an audience
if you are in the audience there are
microphones on the side so just raise
your hand and go to one of the mics
otherwise you can ask a question on
slido over the globesec
app or you can ask a question over zoom
so we've got three opportunities three
ways to ask questions and please start
to
start to think of what you want to ask
our great panelists friend i want to
pick up on this issue of
digital sovereignty because it's
something that you hear a lot
in brussels in berlin and paris i don't
know if you hear as much of it
in central europe but you're sitting in
washington how does washington
interpret this kind of strategic
doctrine or orientation and what do they
see behind it
well i think it is uh kind of a mystery
to many in washington as to why this has
become so important
i think to some degree washington needs
some consciousness raising
i think that if we found for example
that
we were all buying stuff on a french
marketplace and we were getting our
information
from a german company
that we would want to think again
about the balance of where companies are
and why we hadn't done
so well in creating companies but
there's a difference between
creating companies and supporting
research and things like that
and and i think that in the united
states when people
hear about europe's uh horizon 2020 and
other plans uh the the in the
recovery fund 20 going to digital
that's all great the question is
does the type of thing does digital
sovereignty start leading into
protectionism
and we've had a couple of instances
where it has at first appeared that way
and then it has moderated but sometimes
not all the way for example there are
lots of american companies that are
engaged
in gaia x the cloud service providing
but
not on the governing council and so
that is a question mark um
the dma the digital markets act was was
mentioned and i think that this is
probably
the biggest question one that as far as
we can tell is not really on the tech
and trade
the trade and tech council agenda but as
as this proposal is written right now
it looks like it will be a series of
laws that apply only to
american companies that have that only
american companies will have reached the
threshold where this law will apply
so i think that digital sovereignty
is something that in the united states
raises question about
sovereign from whom aren't we supposed
to be in this together
and i think that the notion
and the ability to
overcome the misunderstandings that such
a term can create
is one of the principal benefits that i
hope we will see from
the tech from the turret and tech
council
anna michelle you know just looking at
this through the context of digital
sovereignty
you know we have the digital services
act which really deals with
content moderation and we have the
digital markets act which is looking at
tipping and gatekeepers and and market
power of digital services
and there is an impression that both are
kind of tailored
to the experience that has occurred over
the past 15 years
of online platforms primarily coming out
of the united states
but if you look at the artificial
intelligence regulation
there is a lot of reflection there of
the experience we're seeing in china
i was wondering if you could talk a
little bit about the deliberations in
the european parliament when you look at
things like
social scoring and how that's being
implemented into the regulation or
things like
remote biometric identification etc
and to what extent is that inflected by
new experiences and rising powers like
china
i'd say it's uh this is a vivid and
vibrant discussion
in the parliament uh in the context of
all this legislation that's on the table
that you discussed but
um generally when we talk about these
emerging technologies
and i think that these are points of
major points of
potential convergence with the with the
united states because when you talk
about
you know what how thing how these
technologies can actually be
used then you have to talk about the
principles that guide them and the rules
that will
um guide that will regulate this entire
situation and
i understand that uh this discussion
that we just had about tech sovereignty
and um open strategic autonomy i
understand that this you know
makes these you know little bells ring
in the back of our heads because
we're not just talking about protection
which we have joint interest in
sometimes but protectionism and
that's not at all how i see it in fact
um i just
coming coming full circle around this
issue
when we talk about autonomy in in
europe strategic autonomy one of the
reasons that we're doing it is that we
we want to become stronger
geopolitically and quite frankly the
stronger the stronger we become the
stronger partners we can be
for the united states and for the world
a chain is only as strong
as as each of its of its links and
actually i like to remind people because
i'm
i'm greek um that autonomy is a greek
word
it comes from aftos which means self and
nomus which means law
and literally what it means is you're
safeguarding your right
to make the rules and this is what this
is about
this is about who who has the power
depends largely on who makes the rules
in the digital age who decides whether
social scoring is acceptable um
i think that we'll find lots of lots of
convergence points over making these
types of rules
and this is actually something that the
european union knows how to do pretty
well if you see
you know what we did in gdpr these these
rules became
um global standards so called the
so-called brussels effect
so uh why not work together
uh with democracy and
protection of civil rights and
the rule of law in a multilateral
context and who is better to
inspire the world than a
a great union of the united states and
europe
around these issues which are going to
determine
the future of democracy
anna you know we're starting to see a
change
we're hearing a lot of language on both
sides of the atlantic about who's
setting the rules
and a lot of that is geared towards
china that just by virtue of
the export of technologies the export of
artificial intelligence software ict
infrastructure
et cetera that there is an implicit
embedded rule setting
capability uh within that within the
those operations and that china is
becoming
increasingly um revisionist
in the way that it sees global rules on
things like
privacy data protection data processing
surveillance et cetera of course we see
that domestically in china
how much is this involved in the
discourse around digital rights in
europe
looking at china and the kind of
alternative model that it's looking to
set
the trade and tech council from what
i've read is going to have a democracy
pillar
what do you think should be in that
democracy pillar and how should it
relate to
authoritarian states like china but also
russia
that's a very good question thank you
the discussion amongst the digital uh
rights community
so far has been um and and you know
front touched a little bit on this
has been based on this issue of
monopolistic control
by a small number of big tech companies
mainly us
companies this is increasingly the case
with companies in china you know take
tiktok for example so
that's becoming part of the discussion
in terms of the democratic deficit
obviously the practices in china and
what's happening with the sort of
states events there in russia are
very important for the digital rights
community but
is just beginning to focus on these
issues
uh most of the focus at the moment
uh is about the monopolistic
power of the big platforms um and
actually it's not just the discussion in
the eu
it's in europe it's also the discussion
in the us you've had
um the reports from uh the judiciary
committee david cicilline the
mentioned that this power has to be
controlled
you have the dma and the dsa in europe
so i would say the reasons for all this
sovereignty discussion
is because you know as also an anna
mitchell also mentioned
there is a need for the partners to be
equal
for the two democracies to be together
and work equal
and this is not going to happen so far
as you have
monopolistic platforms that control the
content
of what's going on online and therefore
enable this data exploitation and big
deficits to
democracy which frankly china and
russia can also ex
take advantage of as we've seen in
recent elections
marta this is obviously a point that
google is very familiar with uh google
is a the major player in search it is
the major one of the major players in ad
tech
has a number of lines of service across
which it
uses data analytics it's developed a
very successful business model
what is google's position on the frankly
transatlantic discourse around market
power of online platforms
of which i think four or five are really
kind of in the crosshairs
i think uh thank you uh tyson and uh
also thank you anna for uh for pointing
out the
the issue so i think we've been very
clear from the very beginning that that
we welcome
everything that uh european commission
uh laid out very early
uh in the in the term because there is a
third consensus that
those questions need to be resolved and
need to be
looked at from a from a from a close-up
and i think that points um that points
out the difference
uh that there is between the u.s tech
ecosystem versus
the one associated with bad actors that
we enter those discussions we we open up
ourselves to compliance and
we contribute and i think we are part of
the of the forums where we
both contribute um and listen uh to the
feedback and
this is where um we hope ttc
uh will come in uh to embrace different
perspectives to embrace concerns and
challenges
um that are shared between the u.s
um and europe bearing in mind our third
uh
values but also uh then the necessities
coming from
what are the global challenges that i
spoke
about in my um previous uh
intervention i think um in the past
uh weeks at various occasions we've
heard for example different ideas about
the scopes
of the of the regulations uh we
discussed already
uh in this panel such as dsa uh ndma
so uh moving out um stretching that
discussion over
the atlantic is a guarantee
that a scope would not be describing
discriminatory in nature would not only
target
specific companies but we would be
focusing um
on issues that will will not
outlive companies uh like google but
will define
uh rules for the future as well
we're starting to get some good
questions over uh slido and we have one
question on zoom so i'm going to take
one question from slido
and then i'm going to take one question
from zoom from jack
dalrymple from australia so our first
question is from ziga turk
who asked how can one hope to lead in
standard setting
if if not leading in innovation and i
think that is a great question for ana
michel
i agree they're absolutely intertwined
tyson standard setting and innovation
these are these are intertwined um
but i think that you'll find that europe
is ambitious with respect to innovation
i think it's unfair to
you know to say that europe isn't i mean
europe has really
uh made major investments i'm not going
to go through all the
the funding that is available but okay
when you compare it maybe to the budget
that for example the united states has
for ai announced uh or if you compare it
even to
a lot of the funding that we've seen i
mean china in six months invested
something like half a billion dollars in
just eight
ai projects but at the same time you
can't say the eu
hasn't put this as a priority hasn't
focused on this
and hasn't had results so i i don't buy
into the rhetoric that you know we've
lost the ai raise this is all finished i
don't buy into that at all we have
excellent talent in europe
we have a strategy we're investing money
and
i'm not saying we don't need to
collaborate and i'm not saying that you
know china
isn't isn't uh you know going full speed
and the us
as well but europe is certainly a player
and
um i think that setting the rules
of the game is a big part of
being able to master the game
if not win the game and i'm not sure
that that's the overall objective anyway
i mean it's not it's not you know it's
not just a race for
power it is but it's not just that it's
also
about uh setting the rules and
innovation is also about
people it's also about democracy it's
also about
values and um i think
we need an approach that is
ideological political and also pragmatic
i mean this we are a global community
and we're going to have to be working
together and they're going to be
diverging interests and we need to find
a way to do that
and the way to do that is to be sitting
down at a table
and agreeing on rules
all right we have a question from zoom
uh
let's tee that up right now jack you're
on online
perfect um thank you so much for the
discussions had so far and lovely to be
joining you from
melbourne australia on the other side of
the world um so far the discussions had
around eu us practice projections and
data surveillance policies
um have we obviously understand that
those have broad implications on how
other countries and around the world
utilize and share their data
um it's already been discussed to some
extent the kind of strategic competition
that is occurring between eu and u.s and
china obviously
um i want to understand from the panel
especially anna michelle and fran
um what you think would be the
implications of if the us and eu
failed to actually come to an agreement
on standard kind of gold standard
protections for um for individual people
and using data
um what does that look like and what
implications would that have on the
global economy and i suppose it started
future that would have
maybe fran first and then anna michelle
sure i think that
over say 10 years just to give a time
frame
if there were not an understanding of
the
of how to do data transfers between the
u.s and the eu
the first thing that would happen i
think we're already seeing
uh in the wake of the two shrems
decisions we're seeing more data
localization here
by by companies including american
companies uh who
service data uh here personally
identifiable data
i think however that even if you don't
have standards then
if we fail to come to standard to a
better understanding of
standards then even industrial data and
how you use that i think you'll start to
see
kind of a breakdown in the ability to
transfer that
or you will see in certain areas of the
world
because i hope in 10 years the u.s will
have privacy legislation
that would prevent some abuses of data
but in areas that don't have effective
privacy legislation i think you'll see
more of a wild west type thing and i
think that that will go
also for industrial data there may be
more
um stealing of data and things of that
sort
and so i think that this is something
that we have to work out the us
and the eu and other like-minded
countries
and it may be that there's a role for
the g7 in
starting to do this they have done uh
digital data flows with trust
um but i think that it is an important
thing
because if there aren't rules we're just
discovering now the way
that data can be abused and i think that
there are lots of people with creative
but not necessarily
high-minded thoughts about how to use
data
and michelle what do you think i mean
the european parliament has very strong
opinions about
data privacy and gdpr and um but
fran mentions a really good point which
is the the scale of
data processing is just increasing i
mean we're just seeing more
you know with with artificial
intelligence with facial voice
recognition
the ability to reach into our lives and
anticipate our own behavior and perhaps
even manipulate our own behavior is just
increasing
so how can the us and europe really get
this right and what what are the
framework to what is the framework to do
that
well you know what they say tyson they
say nature hates a void so it'll it'll
actually fill it so
if we don't do it somebody else will and
uh you know china's a pretty big player
and
it has a totally different conception of
what privacy means there is no
you know you don't have any privacy
rights as a citizen it's perfectly okay
to surveil you
every place so if we want to avoid um
this model anybody who doesn't sit down
at the table then other people if you're
not
if you're not at the table then somebody
else will sit down at the table and make
rules and you know actually frankly that
you know in the eu let's not forget that
like national security is a national
competence so
there are some issues on when we talk
about trends too and we talk about the
new privacy shield and dealing with this
matter we don't just have the courts
the ecj to consider we also have to
consider
that a solution could be let's say um
sidebarred by national by nation states
members of the european union and the
same thing in the united states i mean
you have
these states popping up with their own
laws all over the place
maybe it's a good idea to have a federal
framework
after all so that's something to to
think about
but yes uh in the parliament you know
where we're
relentless when it comes to safeguarding
people's privacy rights and again
i don't wanna you know i don't wanna
make this i understand
the need to have a balance between
strict regulation that protects our
rights and at the same time
leaving enough room in a global context
where there are
other players that don't play by the
same rules that don't have such a high
standard for privacy rights
in order for our industry to remain
competitive so you have to have
safeguards
on the on the side of the industrial
policy as well
having said all that again
if we don't do it somebody else will
just do it for us
and that uh that's just not a good idea
i mean i don't want a wild west but i
also don't want somebody else's
autocratic model to be enforced either
uh through the you know at a table
somewhere in a multilateral
context that we're not involved in or
through the back door
uh via companies and their technologies
uh
taking advantage of a legislative void
have we have got five minutes left we've
got one question here on
uh slido which i'm going to direct to
marta but if you i'm going to broaden it
a little bit so the question is
to what extent is digital autonomy
affected by
the eu's semiconductor dependence with
the us being dominant in chip design and
asia being dominant in high-end chip
manufacturing
and i'm just going to expand this to say
to what extent is
uh digital autonomy possible whenever
the eu is dependent on
key enabling technologies from outside
the eu not just
semiconductors but also for example
cloud computing
how can the eu make sure that that is
not putting it in a position
of weakness or putting it in a position
of strength vis-a-vis
its its partners and competitors
thank you uh tyson and to uh to the
person that posed this question
i think that definitely shortage of uh
circuits of specific uh beats
tools um is one of the many many reasons
why those
uh concepts of autonomy um and
uh independence uh or sovereignty
uh emerge but i think uh it's a it's a
it's a much
broader pool um of reasoning
and uh it would be too simplistic to say
it's all about uh semiconductors that's
not something it's a it's of course a
huge industry problem but not something
that
should call for a a strategic um
direction of europe and and i'm sure
that's not uh the only reason and i
think
when it comes to uh more
digital less tangible dependencies
uh that uh you mentioned which i
wouldn't necessarily call
uh dependencies i think uh this is much
uh this is this is this is again much
much broader and definitely uh more
flexible than
shortage um of specific tools
uh needed to perform uh business or
production
and um and and here we are um
i think what we should be looking into
is the
is what is the status quo what are even
if
europe was to claim uh autonomy or
sovereignty what are the
chances then to catch up with the
rest of the world and maybe looking at
the reapproachment we are witnessing
today
and in the past few months maybe i'm
going to bring in this concept maybe
strategic interdependence
is also a mean to help europe get uh
stronger just like the mep
uh was uh saying today um
today on the on the panel there is a lot
to strength and realistically looking
about
realistically looking at capabilities
and resources
available and figuring out what can
allies
provide to each other to catch up
on the individual technological uh
strength and this is
frankly where i also see um the the role
for the
industry that i that i represent and i
think
uh google um has been an important
uh source uh ford for success
for many european companies and
especially when we think ahead about
cloud opportunities
uh this could only uh become more of a
fact
um going forward and i just don't i i do
not
believe that the autonomy discussion is
happening in isolation
i don't believe we're all starting uh
from the same point
um i think there's certain legacy uh
in the background and a lot of
challenges ahead um
and again i'm very excited that we're
having this conversation on a day where
hopefully we're gonna talk about the new
chapter
of the transatlantic tech cooperation
that that will be of mutual benefit that
will respect the rights and expectations
of the both sides of the of the atlantic
will let the industry grow will
let this great economic uh relationship
um
flourish uh but in more concrete terms
would
also help europe
grow not not to have a
reason when we meet same time next year
to again
touch upon touch upon concepts of
autonomy
marta that's an excellent note to end on
and the idea of strategic
interdependence
is i think a good uh starting point or a
good theme for the trade and tech
council and hopefully we'll be able to
meet here in a year
and talk about the agenda items that
they have uh laid out and maybe even
some objectives that they've actually
achieved
uh thank you so much to fran burwell
anna michelle uh
asim makopulu uh anna fielder and
marta poshlad for being in this round
with us
uh this is this concludes this round uh
and
we will be back here we're going to take
a coffee break uh coming back here in
maria teresia will be
global perspectives on fighting covet 19
with some great guests
and on the main stage on habsburg at 3
p.m
there will be precious space a string of
satellites and the future of
influence so that will also be
interesting and take up some of these
issues
i want to thank the panelists and thank
the audience and this was a great
discussion
uh see you next time
thank you thank you