Taking the Temperature of Tech Policy Debates in Brussels at CPDP

Why It Matters

The outcomes of these debates will shape how the EU consolidates and enforces tech laws, affecting compliance costs for firms, protections for citizens, and whether Europe pursues a more insulated ‘sovereign’ stack or coordinated global standards. The lack of clarity and consensus raises political and regulatory uncertainty for companies and international partners ahead of key omnibus decisions this summer.

Summary

At the 19th CPDP conference in Brussels, policymakers, academics, industry and civil-society voices clashed over competing visions for Europe’s digital future, centering on the EU’s ‘digital omnibus’ simplification package, tech sovereignty, and child-safety rules. Debate focused on whether omnibus measures streamline overlapping rules or thin out protections by disguising deregulation, with heated panel discussions and disagreement even about what problem the omnibus should solve. Participants also wrestled with trade-offs between building European digital capacity and maintaining interoperability with global tech platforms, while the AI omnibus and GDPR alignment loomed as immediate legislative priorities. Overall, the conference exposed fractures in consensus and a growing contest between U.S. and European approaches to regulating digital markets and democracy.

Original Description

In this episode, we reflect on the 19th edition of CPDP (https://www.cpdpconferences.org/) (Computers, Privacy and Data Protection), the major Brussels tech policy conference, held last week under this year's theme, "Competing Visions, Shared Futures." We discuss the dominant debates from the gathering, including the contested Digital Omnibus simplification package, digital and tech sovereignty, researcher access to platform data under the Digital Services Act, the rising prominence of child online safet

We feature voices from across the conference, including Tech Policy Press contributing editor Mark Scott, AlgorithmWatch's Oliver Marsh, the Knight-Georgetown Institute's Peter Chapman, the Center for Democracy and Technology's Marie Seck, Project SENTIMENT's Joel Baumann, Mozilla's Svea Windwehr, and conference director Barbara Lazarotto.

And, you’ll hear two interviews: a conversation with European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiórowski on whether the GDPR needs reform amid the simplification push, and a wide-ranging reflection from CPDP founder Paul De Hert on how the conference and the field of data protection have evolved over nearly two decades, the value of reasoned disagreement, and why Europe should be more self-critical.