Tech Pro Brief

Wed 20 November 2024 | View online
Estimated reading time: 4-5 minutes


Good day ,



Thank you for joining us for our daily Tech Pro briefing. Today we are covering the Coreper meeting, policy requests by the media sector, and the implementation of the AI Act.


You have received this email because you have signed up for the daily Tech Pro Brief. If you would like to manage your subscription, click here.  


🟡 Top stories

Coreper’s long task list

Coreper I has several tech items on its agenda today, particularly around telecoms, cybersecurity, and space. It will be interesting to see how the disruption in the Sweden-Germany subsea cable affects these conversations. We expect it to be on everyone’s minds.


First up is the adoption of the conclusions in response to the Commission's February white paper on EU telecoms infrastructure. If Coreper approves the draft, it will be presented to telecom ministers at the 6 December Council meeting.

  • The current text mentions a toned-down version on "consolidation" of the telecoms sector. The first version of the text was already timidly mentioning this, and the text has been watered down further. Although some EU countries during working parties suggested deleting the paragraph altogether, the mention to consolidation was not completely erased.

    • "Authorised market driven consolidation could, provided there is effective competition in the relevant market, create economies of scale in [telecoms]," reads the latest version seen by Euractiv.

  • "[The Council] welcomes the objective to simplify the applicable rules" of the European Electronics Communications Code (EECC), reads the latest draft.

    • The sentence directly references the Commission's push to cut red tape, especially thanks to its newly appointed Commissioner in charge of simplification, Valdis Dombrovskis.

    • It could also be interpreted as an indirect reference to a move from ex-ante rules from the current EECC framework when it comes to merger controls to ex-post oversight by the EU merger regulations, which is something the largest telecom operators are pushing for.

  • Another important last-minute change is the removal of a reference that spectrum management was largely a national competence.


Conclusions on ENISA's role and future are also set to be adopted.

  • In a draft seen by Euractiv, the Council was set to ask for more transparency as well as a boost in its financial resources, among other things.

  • ENISA's workload is set to grow significantly in the next mandate as cybersecurity regulations come into effect.


The Council is also set to discuss three matters related to space policy:

  • Most interesting among them is the preparation for an exchange of views to take place at the Competitiveness Council on 29 November on "the future of the [European] Union space policy."

    • The discussion items revolve mostly around the dual-use of space technology.

  • There are also draft conclusions on "reinforcing European competencies in the space sector" and "the interim evaluation of the European Union's Space Program."

🟡 Platforms

An audiovisual manifesto

The Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand (VoD) Services in Europe has published a manifesto for the upcoming mandate. It touches upon several key aspects of tech regulation, so here are some of their asks that jump out:

  • Use a "risk-based approach" on consumer protection, including minors' protection, that "takes into account the low-risk that curated environments TV and VoD represent."

  • "Deliver on promises" made with the Digital Markets Act.

    • Part of this is by preventing "exclusionary practices," such as the phasing out of third-party cookies, which allow the audiovisual sector to "connect with audiences" and use digital advertising tools.

    • They are also drawing attention to connected devices and voice assistants as potential core platform services.  

  • Do not make new rules on copyright, and let the directive "settle."

  • Protect "exclusive territorial licensing," for example by maintaining the geo-blocking exemption for audiovisual works.

  • New regulation to "fight online piracy of live events as a first building block" to the Digital Services Act.

🟡 AI

Differences emerging

With the first draft of the Code of Practice for general-purpose AI in hand, we are starting to see differences emerge between the stakeholders.


Industry, civil society, and academia are voicing their input in working groups meeting this week, while working on written input due on 28 November.


The working group meetings feature input from pre-selected set of speakers and the chairs responding to the most up-voted questions submitted through the Slido platform, in what was called an "interactive session.”


Some may have missed the opportunity to voice their opinions considering the short deadline given last week. For the working group on Monday, the most up-voted question had 5 votes, one person involved told Euractiv.


From speaking with stakeholders about the first draft and hearing what was discussed in the meeting, here are some of the axes of disagreement:

  • What's in the AI Act and what's not. Industry has said several times they're afraid the CoP will "go further" than the AI Act. The current draft of the code makes sure to repeatedly reference relevant parts of the AI Act, especially in contentious areas.

    • One of these areas are third-party audits, which industry stakeholders say are outside the scope of the Act, but is included in the CoP.

      • The CoP refers to a recital that reads "this Regulation should require providers to perform the necessary model evaluations [...] as appropriate, through internal or independent external testing."

      • The CoP does not set the specific requirements for when providers have to do third-party testing, so some civil society organisations see it as still open and hope it will be mandated in the CoP.

      • One of the "open questions" in the draft asks what circumstances makes pre-deployment third-party testing appropriate.

  • Exemption of SMEs and startups. Some industry representatives argued that the same rules should apply to everyone, not exempting SMEs and startups. A civil society representative told Euractiv that this could be a tactic to water down regulations; if everyone has to comply with it, it should also be mild.

  • Copyright issues might be a direct conflict of interest between industry aiming to make it easy to use data and rightsholders aiming to protect their intellectual property and get compensation. It will be discussed at a working group on Thursday.

  • Open source models should be exempt from some requirements, but this might cause a consistency challenge for models posing systemic risk. Can the CoP apply less lenient standards for models posing the same kinds of risk that are less controllable?


The first draft is still (perhaps by design) lacking in detail, especially for working groups 2-4, so the tension between different interest groups should increase as the code is narrowed down.

🟡 The Capitals

🇩🇪 Germany - The Federal Court of Justice of Germany, based in Karlsruhe, ruled that users can ask compensation from Meta over a data leak. Back in 2018 and 2019, hackers were able to access over 500 million users’ data through a loophole on Facebook’s search function. They leaked that data in 2021. The court ruled that the claimant could be compensated about  €100 for damages, not the €1,000 he asked for. The ruling means thousands of cases for this data leak in German courts have to be re-examined, Reuters reported. Meta said the ruling is “incosistent” with case law of the European Court of Justice.


🇮🇹 🇮🇳 Italy and India -  Italy’s President Giorgia Meloni held a bilateral meeting with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro. On Tuesday, 19 November, they announced a Joint Strategic Action Plan 2025-2029, which includes enhanced cooperation in space, defense, tech, as well as research and innovation.

Read more

Today’s brief was brought to you by Euractiv’s Tech team

Today’s briefing was prepared by the Tech team: Eliza Gkritsi, Théophane Hartmann, and Jacob Wulff Wold. Share your feedback or information with us at digital@euractiv.com.

Transfer to third parties is not authorised. If you found this newsletter valuable, please recommend a free trial.

Contact us - Manage your briefing subscriptions

© Euractiv. All rights reserved.