Yesterday saw the first slip-up by Thierry Breton, the new EU Commissioner for the (digital) single market. In Council, Breton told ministers the Commission would withdraw its proposal on #ePrivacy, only to backpedal a few hours later, saying 'all options' were on the table.
This gaffe lead mainly to a few confusing and contradictory headlines, but it opens a few questions for the next five years. The first - how will Breton fare with ministers when he tells them one thing in Council and a completely different thing to the press later?
The second and more pressing question for Breton - will he give way to pressure from member states and industry to create weak rules for the digital economy, or will he stand up to powerful interests which he himself represented just a few weeks ago?
A spokesperson said Breton wants to work with the Croatian presidency to have another go on finding a compromise on the basis of the current Commission proposal. So he apparently just misspoke and they won't retract just yet. But 'all options on the table'. #ePrivacy
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
BREAKING - After reports that the EU Commission used political microtargeting to sway key groups of their controversial CSAM proposal, the European Data Protection Supervisor has reached out under the "so-called pre-investigation procedure."
What does this mean?
The EDPS requested "information related to the described use of microtargeted ads, to be provided by 20 0ctober."
The EU's data protection authority told me that while "this step does not constitute opening of a formal investigation, the EDPS will assess the information, once received from the Commissions, and decide on the potential next steps accordingly."
The Commission has denied access to the EU membership questionnaire which president Zelenskyy personally handed to Ursula von der Leyen during a visit to Kyiv in June. #Ukraine
Why is this important? Von der Leyen said in a speech on April 8 that "[t]his questionnaire is the basis for our discussion in the coming months." It details on political and economic criteria for accession, as well as the aquis of European law.
When I asked the Commission for the questionnaire, they told me that the Ukrainian government had published the questions (if not the answers) on their website. They have since been removed and are unfindable on the Wayback Machine.
Eigentlich recht merkwürdig, dass das ziemlich beachtliche Interview von @KappacherS mit Gemeindebundpräsident Riedl im Mittagsjournal heute so wenig Beachtung fand. Warum es so interessant war? Ein 🧵
Zum einen hat Riedl mit seiner kritischen Haltung zur ÖVP-Spitze kaum hinter Berg gehalten und deutlich Ärger über die vielen Korruptionsvorwürfe spüren lassen. Im einzigen Zeitungsbericht im Kurier kommt das zahm rüber, aber an der Basis brodelt offenbar. kurier.at/politik/inland…
Interessant auch, dass Riedl beim heißen Övp-Thema Kinderbetreuung ("Kann ich ein Bundesland aufheizen") mehr Geld und Standards vom Bund fordert. Hier kriegt die Kritik an der kopflosen Parteiführung eine inhaltliche Kontur.
What Ursula von der Leyen is typing into her phone is, frankly, not a private matter. We need public scrutiny of EU text messages when they are used to make billion euro vaccine deals. The @EUombudsman says it loud and clear today in regard to a complaint I filed. (Thread)
What's this about? Early this year, the Commission announced it will buy 1,8 billion additional Pfizer doses. This made Pfizer the EU's most important vendor and fuels the booster campaigns around the EU. The deal was clinched in calls and text messages, @MatinaStevis reported.
If the Commission President engages on the highest level with a vendor for what's likely the procurement deal of the decade, that should be up for scrutiny, right? After all, the EU has a freedom of information law, Regulation 1049/2001. It was made exactly for things like this.
Nice win regarding transparency in EU negotiations - the Council replied positively to my request and released 60 documents detailing how member states negotiated their position on the Digital Services Act. This will be a really nice resource for anyone working on this. #dsa
Earlier today I published one bit from the trove, a document showing that NATO's Riga centre for strategic communication actively lobbied the Council to change one particular Article in the DSA with the intention to give NATO researchers access to data from Facebook etc.
You can find the story here, in German. (Let me know if there is interest for a translation.) netzpolitik.org/2022/exklusiv-…