#39 - European Regulations in Tech: some insider perspectives with Kim Van Sparrentak and Max Schulze
Update: 2024-05-21
Description
🔎 Major regulations have been built up in Europe these past years impacting the Tech sectors. How have they been built? What does it take to pass these kinds of bills in the unique European Union political system? And what are the consequences for the people working in the digital industry?Â
🎙️ This episode 39 welcomes Kim Van Sparrentak, a Member of the European Parliament involved in legislation related to tech and sustainability, and Max Schulze, the founder and chairman of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance, one of the main lobby groups for more responsible technology. Together with Gael Duez, they share their perspective on the European regulations in Tech.
Some points which have been discussed:
⚖️ the Artificial Intelligence Act,
🌱 Environmental transparency among actors, and
🤝 the Influence of big tech companies through lobbying
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Kim and Max's sources and other references mentioned in this episode:
- SDIA
- EU Artificial Intelligent Act
- Clarification between regulation and directives
- EU CSRD
- EED
- Taxonomy
- EU Right to repair law
- Chris Adams analysis on AWS 4% expenditures spent in energyÂ
- EU transparency monitoringÂ
- EU Report on addictive design of mobile phones (Kim Van Sparrentak was the rapporteur)
Transcript
Intro 00:00
When you sit in a plane, you want the plane to be safe. And you look at your government, your elected government, say like, Hey, you better make sure those planes are safe because otherwise I'm going to die. With tech, most of society today, they're getting a lot of their truths, their information out of modern technology. And it's a little bit like asking somebody who really likes to smoke to advocate for stopping the tobacco industry.
Gael Duez 00:34
Hello everyone, welcome to Green IO with Gaël Duez. That's me. Green IO is the podcast for responsible technologists building a greener digital world, one byte at a time, twice a month on a Tuesday, our guests from across the globe share insights, tools and alternative approaches, enabling people within the tech sector and beyond to boost digital sustainability. And because accessible and transparent information is in the DNA of Green IO, all the references mentioned in this episode, as well as the transcript will be in the show notes both on your podcast platform and on our website greenio.tech
The long arm of European Tech Regulation, I'm not sure who coined the term, but it surely resonated with me when I heard it the first time. The classical example is GDPR, the data protection law which has inspired similar bills in Indonesia, India or Colombia, just to name a few. It's fair to say that despite remaining an economic giant, the European Union is not leading the race in digital technologies compared to lets say China or the USA. However, it's clearly having a major influence in shaping how people use digital technologies worldwide. And when it comes to sustainability, it's an arm the size of Elastigirl from the Incredibles movie that was talking about taxonomy, GDPR, energy efficiency directive, you name it. Major regulations have been built up these past years impacting all economic sectors and especially tech. This is why I have been eager for a while to have a good overview of these regulations, as well as those in the pipeline for quite a long time now. And to be honest, I'm also curious how they've been built. What does it take to pass these kinds of bills in the unique European Union political system?Â
Hence, my need to have solid guides to navigate the Brussels Maze and I couldn't find better than Kim and Max. Kim Van Sparrentak is a member of the European Parliament. She's a member of the Green Party, and she has been involved in pretty much all legislation related to tech and sustainability in these last five years. And Max Schulze, he's a former engineer with quite long experience in it, and he's now the founder and chairman of the Sustainable Digital Infrastructure Alliance and he has been very involved in positive lobbying, I would say, among sustainability for the tech industry.Â
Now, I'm honored to have both Kim and Max. I owe some disclosure to my audience before I let them introduce themselves in more detail and explain how they've been interested in this sustainability work. This work, sorry around sustainability, but I owe you a full disclosure. I'm a member of the SDIA, a very, very passive member, and that was just for support and I'm not a member of the Green Party, so full disclosure, and I'm not a member of any political party.
Very nice to meet you, Kim and Max. Maybe just to clarify a bit the wordings and set the stage. Kim, could you, I'd say that I know it's super hard exercise, but what kind of legislation does the European Union pass? How does it, I mean, we hear about laws, bills, regulations, et cetera. I think it's maybe good to, for instance, we've heard, I've mentioned GDPR, which is a regulation, but there are different kinds of laws. So without answering a full lecture, it might be worse for understanding the discussions later to get a grasp on how it works.
Kim Van Sparrentak 04:28
Yes. So basically you have, if you keep it very short, there's two types. You have directives, and a directive gives basically guidelines to member states with sort of minimum standards on what they have to make sure happens in their member state. But depending on what the current rules are already in a respective country, they can adjust as long as they sort of reach the goals of the directive. And then you have regulations and acts, and that is a standard for the whole European Union. And especially when it comes to digital technology, we have lots of acts and regulations because they are related to the internal market and we want the same standard for products and platforms in the European single market and the single digital market.
Gael Duez 05:20
And I think it was just a good reminder of how it works. Now, my first question for both of you would be what are, according to you, the main legislations covering both sustainability and digital technology that we should be aware of? And maybe, Max, you want to start with?
Max Schulze 05:39
Yeah, I think we talked about it before the call a bit, but, so I would describe it, people can't see me, but I would describe it that we have regulation on the very top layer and at the very bottom layer. And what I mean is we have something like the Digital Markets Act, we have the Digital Services Act. We have things that are trying to regulate the products and services. So the metas and the really big platforms and Airbnbs of this world and Spotify and try to set rules on how you can make a product or a digital service in the European market. And then we have the very bottom layer, which is about digital infrastructure. So data centers, fiber, which is the energy efficiency directive. There is something in the taxonomy about this where we say this is how we want the physical infrastructure to be built.Â
One point, because you already described me as a lobbyist, so I'm going to lobby here. What we're missing at the moment in Europe is always a more systemic perspective because these products and services that are very large use a lot of these infrastructures, and we don't target it as one. We target it as two different blocks. And I think we ou
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