Digitalisation and democracy: The role of digital in the new social contract

In his current position at the European Parliament, Dragos Tudorache analyses the challenges of deploying artificial intelligence and its future impact on the EU economy. Tudorache has a long history of public service in Romania, previously serving as Head of the Prime Minister’s Chancellery, Minister of Communications and for the Digital Society, and Minister of Interior. Before his election to the European Parliament, he held a number of positions at the European Comission, including managing strategic projects such as the Schengen Information System, Visa Information System and the establishment of the European Union Agency for the Operational Management of Large-Scale IT Systems (eu-LISA).

Dr. Colin Scicluna is the Head of Cabinet to the Vice President of the European Commission responsible for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Šuica. Before being appointed to this position in 2019, he served as Ambassador of Malta, Permanent Representative to the OSCE, and in the Policy Unit of the High Representative for the CFSP, Javier Solana, and the European External Action Service. He also served as an adviser to Catherine Ashton, then Vice President of the European Commission, and in the Cabinet of then-Commissioner for the European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn. Ambassador Scicluna is a graduate in Law (University of Malta) and International Politics (Université Libre de Bruxelles). Dr. Scicluna speaks Maltese, English, Italian, French and Dutch.

Erzsébet Fitori is responsible for Vodafone Group’s engagement with the EU institutions and key EU stakeholders. She currently heads Vodafone’s Brussels office and represents the company as Board Director in industry organisations. She is the former director-general of FTTH Council Europe, the pan-European trade association representing over 160 innovators, network operators and investors across the fibre value chain. In this role, she focused on growing the organisation by driving its membership base, revenues and engagement with key policymakers. Prior to this, Fitori represented over 100 challenger telecoms operators as the director of the European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA). She oversaw ECTA’s public policy, regulatory and PR activities, and led engagement with the EU institutions, national regulators and governments. Fitori is also the former head of regulatory affairs at Telenor Hungary in Budapest.

Erika Staël von Holstein is Chief Executive of Re-Imagine Europa. She has been working in the field of connecting science, society and policy for over a decade. She is fellow at PlusValue, a UK-based European company focusing on social innovation, and a board member of Citizen Communication Platform, a Swedish project to promote stronger communication with citizens. Previously, Ms. Erika Staël von Holstein occupied the position of Chairman of the Advisory Board of REIsearch, an innovative non-profit European platform co-funded by the European Commission to demonstrate how a simple technological tool, coupled to a broad network of leading media, research institutions, researchers, civil society organisations, and citizens, can help policy makers to make better use of all knowledge and experience – wherever it may come from – to make better decisions, based on evidence and experience, for the benefit of society as a whole.

Eva Maydell’s priorities focus on enhancing skills-creation and the use of innovation and technologies, supporting entrepreneurs and investments in Europe. In the European Parliament, she is a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy as well as the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. She is also a member of the Delegation for relations with Japan as well as the Delegation for relations with the US.

Eva is among the most active members of the European Parliament. Currently, she is EPP rapporteur on the Data Strategy. She was the main Parliament rapporteur on the Regulation on charges on cross-border payments as well as worked on several legislative files, part of the Digital Single Market Strategy – the e-Privacy Regulation, the Directive for the supply of digital content, the Regulation on portability, Digitising European industry and the European cloud initiative. She was also rapporteur for the EPP Group on the implementation of the European Fund for Strategic Investments, the New Skills Agenda and the Influence of technology on the future of the financial sector (FinTech).

Eva has been awarded the European Parliament’s MEP of the Year Award twice. She has also been
included in FT’s own ‘New Europe 100′ ranking of CEE’s emerging change-makers, European Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list and others.

Trisha Meyer is an Assistant Professor in Digital Governance and Participation at VUB and a Professorial Fellow at United Nations University CRIS in Bruges. Her research interests include the regulatory push towards and societal consequences of tech platforms taking proactive (and automated) measures to moderate content, as well as stakeholder engagement and participatory governance in digital policy. Meyer has co-authored a study on the use of AI to tackle disinformation for the European Parliament (2019) and a study mapping global responses to disinformation for UNESCO/ITU (2020). She is currently the principal investigator of the EDMO BELUX project, an EU-funded hub on research, fact-checking and media literacy on online disinformation in Belgium and Luxembourg.

Alice Stollmeyer is the Founder and Executive Director of Defend Democracy, an independent, nonpartisan, transatlantic NGO defending democracy from foreign, domestic and technological threats. Stollmeyer has a background in social studies of science, technology and society. A former digital strategist, she now works on democracy, technology, geopolitics and hybrid threats. She has worked in Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels, the heart of the European Union.