That was an accutated parliamentary assistant with a big example, a member of the European Parliament.
And she's going to come and talk a bit about what's happening there.
And from the political perspective, give us some insight.
Yeah, please.
Welcome.
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much for the video.
Thank you.
Okay.
Perfect.
That was a lengthy disclaimer.
I think he meant me that I have never been here so far.
I hope to change that for the future.
So I'm looking forward to meeting a lot of faces again next year and then the upcoming years.
It was clearly an omission on my side to not be aware of such an amazing conference that brings together so many experts in the field.
And for me as an upper, so I work in the political field.
I'm not the politically responsible person, but I'm preparing a lot of things that are later discussed and decided on European stage.
It is incredible that something that amazing is happening every year and without us in the policy sphere noticing.
Or, I mean, we have someone from the commission here, but from a department that is, well, I would say it's a gourmet department in the, in the interplay.
I don't doubt that.
So just, I will just open my presentation.
Just to open up a little bit, a few free to ask any question at any time.
I am aware that I'm using a lot of abbreviations, acronyms that are, for me, my bread and butter.
But for you, this might sound a bit foreign.
And therefore, I don't, well, that there are no real rules, right?
So we can just introduce questions whenever.
And later, when we have the panel discussion, please ask a lot of questions because this is also a chance.
What I understand is that there's, perhaps, the...
One step through the right, the other way.
The other right, this is right.
Ah, I'm sorry.
Okay, well, that, I would just like open like this.
This is the good right?
Well, it's a good right, well.
I already started with that jokes.
All right.
So, what I want to talk to you about today is a little bit a state of play, a stock taking, what has happened in the past mandate,
by the European Commission and what the co-legislators have decided.
All of you have heard the A, I, all of you heard about the DSA and the DMA.
What does it really mean? What does it entail? What are the problems?
And why are we now already talking about taking some of these legislation back?
So, where are the, so to say issues about the legislation that we have decided last mandate?
And yeah, why are we talking already about not implementing it, but even going as far as,
withdrawing some of that legislation?
Perhaps you also heard about something called the druggy report or the competitiveness compass.
It's kind of funny because the compass is pointing you in one direction, usually.
But in the European framework, we have 27 member states that will decide how to go into that direction.
So, that is, I think a very interesting picture that the Commission has chosen in order to set its competitiveness agenda for the upcoming years.
Notably, I think that something that could be quite interesting for everyone that is working on projects.
There is a, there's a fund for scene. There is a multi-billion euro fund for scene just for competitiveness.
We will elaborate and allude a little bit in the direction of how do we get that money,
because I think that neither of you would right now be in the position or maybe a handful.
I don't know, I don't want to assume, how to get actually access to this money.
And this is some of the problems that we will discuss, hopefully in the panel,
but I can only touch a little bit based on that subject.
Overall, just about myself, I'm working on tech legislation,
a bit more in the area of fundamental rights and internal affairs.
So, the actual aspects are the adults within a different committee,
which is called the so-called itchro committee, so innovation and technology,
but also internal market.
And already now, you can see that there's a lot of chefs cooking one soup.
Here, we have a sort of disconnect in terms of what is necessary from different perspectives,
because the ones that are regulating innovation,
I do not necessarily talk to the data protection people.
And then we also have internal market barriers, which is the, which is the, in, in, in, in, in the committee.
There's, there's just a jacket, you can see.
And therefore, it's already a challenge to streamline a position in the European Parliament,
and I'm not even talking about the, the Member States Council side of things.
This is a little bit where we are, right?
Now, and just to talk about what is unfinished and what we are still talking about.
So, we are, we have, we have something on the table, which is called the European Cloud Certification Scheme,
which we can take baths, whether this will ever see the light of day or night,
but they were quite some interesting ideas, because we're talking a lot about sovereignty,
and we are talking about how to make Europe more competitive.
But one aspect that was included by a handful of Member States later,
they kind of dropped along the way, and it was left to France to advocate for this,
was a sovereignty requirement and a immunity requirement.
Not going to go into the details, but they were first attempts into making something,
I would say, make it European first, or let's preference Europe first.
But then later, this was, I mean at the moment, it is exclusively France, who is advocating for it.
And therefore, we, we have a chance not to leave it to the hyperscalers.
However, it is, at the moment, not so much used, or people are rather cautious,
because in the past, what we were working mostly on was fair access to the internal market,
abolish national barriers.
So, there should be no difference between Germany, France, Czech Republic and Sweden,
but we did not really think globally.
So, first and foremost, we wanted to have one internal market,
but did not really take into account that there would be other players,
such as China, US and India.
So, for now, this is a bit of a predicament that they use finding itself in,
so we have worked well on having one single market,
but where are we on European technologies exporting globally?
We have some, I would not say, Champions, I would say, competitors.
In Member States, these are competitors, in the Member States, are protected by their governments,
but is there a European one?
And this is an open question, and I, in the research from my presentation,
I was surprised to see how many amazing European companies we have,
but so little are known worldwide, or so little actually go out there
and work in particular when you go from East to West.
There are quite a few companies, in particular, in Eastern Europe,
that would like to offer their services as well in the Western continent,
part of Europe, but they are challenges.
Notably, we have a Romanian company that has won the bit in Belgium,
so I think that we should appreciate some of these small successes,
but we do not talk about them enough.
What the name is the title company?
What the name is?
I will send it later, I will send it later.
So, what is the strategy, how can we improve it?
The first aspect I already mentioned, it was the compass,
and the compass comes with an omnibus simplification package.
So, we really like these passwords, we really like these names, and what does it mean?
The omnibus means that there will be areas addressed or identified,
where burdens are too big, cutting red tape,
and therefore, it is necessary to work on either withdrawing legislation,
or improving the state of play for SMEs.
And at the moment, this is quite a worrying trend,
because what we see is that simplification could be also used as a Trojan horse,
in order to reopen or to weaken certain standards that we have achieved,
and this concerns not only my area of expertise, fundamental rights,
but also cybersecurity standards.
And I hope that we will not end up in this false binary discussion,
where we have to kind of weigh in on what is innovation,
and what is competitiveness, and in the end we all know what will win.
So, I hope that we will, in the process of negotiating alongside the omnibus proposal,
that the voice of reason, the voice of actually improving the state of play for everyone
will win over competitiveness considerations.
So, since the kind of colleague already signaled me?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
I've got two of them agree, well, I understand how little 10 minutes are.
But I hope that in any case, I hope that there will be a lot of questions
that will actively and engagingly debate about this,
because I'm requesting also from your side that you give me input,
because it is not always, I mean, what we always preach is,
not negotiate and silos.
However, the reality is that there is little to no interconnection between the actual experts,
the ones that are providing the services,
the ones that are innovating really, that are creating,
sometimes unintentionally an infrastructure, and us.
And I wish to change that also with the new mandate, with the new majorities.
I was asked to talk a little bit more about how work in the European Parliament is,
but maybe later we will get to the point where I can explain to you how difficult it has actually become.
Only in the first couple of months after the European elections already now,
it is very challenging to find majorities that put progress, that put the people first.
And therefore, it's going to be a big challenge,
so I'm really relying on experts such as you and everyone.
I hope somebody who watches online, to reach out.
I will also, in the end, you will see my email address, in case you have ideas,
in case you have input, my inbox is open.
So I'm reading every email, I really like to have a clean inbox,
but I also am a hands-on person.
So if you write me something, if you want to have a suggestion,
if you have a question, I'm not good on grants, unfortunately.
So there's, usually there's people for just like how to read European grants and tenders.
This is not something I can help you with, but I know who to connect you.
This is what I can offer.
In the end, I will just like skip immediately to the conclusions,
because time is of essence.
So what I'm hoping to see in the upcoming now four years is that we will adopt an interoperability by design principle.
I hope that this is something that everyone can agree on,
despite the political cooler and despite the college's latest standing.
It is necessary that we have public services and digital infrastructures
that ensure that actually the one's only principle actually works.
It's not just like, you know, something that we preach,
but we have to also walk the talk here.
And we have to mend it open standards in procurement processes.
This is a very interesting aspect that was mentioned at the open for summits.
I think that we can actually integrate this.
Legislatively not as challenging.
It's just a political question.
Then I want to, I want to see more investment into European open source projects.
And here the investment is the key and how to ask for that investment.
So we have to bring together public spending, public money, but also private money.
And become better at connecting this, you know.
And I think that's everybody is on dating apps nowadays.
We have to match these demands.
But we need to have the money and the project and the services match together.
Over all, we need to encourage collaboration.
Well, this is nice and then, but how does this look like?
And the collaboration part comes from demand.
So if we create the demand, then we will also have more collaboration.
And last but not least, education and training.
And I'm including myself here.
I also want to understand better what you guys are doing, what are developers doing,
what are open source means.
And this is a panel that was earlier, or maybe it was later, I don't know.
But everything about open washing.
So that people cannot claim that they are actually providing you with an open source software.
And just because it sounds nice, doesn't necessarily mean that this is the case.
So we also have to look here what we are, what do we want to support?
And I think that in the overall policy makers have to take a bit of a lesson.
And talk more to people who are actually building the infrastructure and offering the services.
And I'm here to extend an arm and hoping to learn a lot from you.
And my time is up now.
So thank you very much for the attention.
And yeah.
Thank you very much.
We will now welcome Alexander Smolanicki and Samuel Peku for presentation about the open desk.
Here you go.
Yeah.
And then I don't think we don't have the point.
Just take the mic off the mic for the video.
Yeah.
And you have to stay in between the lightest stand in this box.
Perfect.
Cool.
Good morning guys.
Maybe just before we immediately, so many cameras.
And maybe before we will start talking about how we work together, we will briefly explain what we are working on.
My name is Alexander.
This is Samuel.
And we have two big products which we are shipping in so far just two nations.
One of them is open desk.
It's a bundle of different productivity apps.
So to say, which we call a server in workspace.
And you can do basically everything from your day-to-day work up until collaboration and real-time communication as in chat or video conferencing.
And we do it as send this.
Send this is a German state.
So to say, send this stands for the center of digital sovereignty.
And we will have a teaser in regards to where you can find us later on.
Yeah.
So on the French side, we started with another the other way around with last suite.
We had seen the COVID.
We had some standalone applications for one for video conferencing.
For instant messaging and one for collaboration online.
But there are separate applications.
And so we to make it a suite.
We worked on SSO.
So because France is more centralized as a state.
So we have a central SSO.
And we start with this application that has been starting now to make them interoperable and try to make a suite from this.
So these are two different approaches.
And although we have different approaches, we are starting to see how we can work together.
That's the magic of open source.
That we can iteratively find common grounds.
Earlier last year, there was the idea that France and Germany should work together.
And it was a process.
I think it was two years in making of a three-page document.
Such a memorandum of understanding where two states would share common efforts.
And once it was signed for the French and also for the German team,
we said that we should make results faster.
Well, what's that?
That's the power of can you, your computer?
And we said that we should create results faster.
And an unbirocratic manner.
And the idea that we worked on is, how can we work together as two separate teams without any joint?
That's really cool to see all of that.
Oh, good.
There is an open source alternative to the tool.
We'll provide the team.
Anyhow, so what we did, it's all good.
Nor is we will just skip like that.
So what we did was we figured out the way that both teams as in product and also developers
and also some policy people created for themselves challenges,
which we gave in 100 day budget each, so to say, to solve and tackle.
And to tell you more about the challenges that we decided on,
Samuel is going to briefly explain that.
So we decided on three challenges.
The first challenge was to try to connect our SSLs.
So see if the French site could log in our applications.
Sorry, if the German site could log into the French application and also the country.
And so this was the first project.
There's not much development, it's more on configuration.
But it's a big impact if we manage to do this.
The second project was to work on our collaboration tool.
We had, we see a lot of people doing shadow IT going to notion.
And so we thought we need to have something to this level to be able to do documentation
and real-time collaboration.
So we started working on this kind of tool together.
And the third challenge was are we able to put some AI in one of our products.
This is a big objective.
Now, there's people wanting to finance AI.
I want to see what Europe is able to do.
So we said, as very pragmatic approach, what are we able to put in our tool in a few days of work.
So that's the three challenges we gave ourselves.
And we had quite some success with these challenges.
They went from September to December and December.
We had a big show in Berlin where we showed what we have done.
It's basically, I think it's always interesting to see if two governments work together.
It's always either you have state dinners or something like that.
Or it's completely informal.
And we really liked the fact that we created some sort of a joint team where people shared across language barriers across just also state barriers.
So to say, common tasks, we had hackathons where both teams met either in Germany or in France.
We always, and that was, I think, also really important.
We shared results with other countries as well.
So we had a hackathon with, I think, eight other countries in September, in Paris.
Then we had a final event also with representatives also from the commission and also from other countries.
Back in December, we provided food.
It's not only 24-7 work, but we also provided food.
It's always important to all the developers and the different tasks and the different challenges were conducted in a very different manner.
And it's really interesting to see culture also within governments, which are sometimes different, work together actually.
So we had one team which, up until now, sometimes it's now it's sometimes daily, but they had just daily stand-ups where there was no real, I don't know, there was no task that they would have to tackle in such a manner.
So to say, but we created an environment where basically all the developers could figure out a way how they can work best to provide this results and come up to that idea.
And I think it's really important on that note.
Also to say thank you, thank you to the developers who worked with us and are still working and are maybe in the stream or are going to see it somewhere.
But also thanks to the CIOs of France and Germany that we could start something like that because it's nothing out of the ordinary, so to say that two states can work on a really easy manner in that regard.
And what we noticed is that it's something that not only sovereignty doesn't stop at the German or the French or the German French border, but it's European or joint effort.
And in December we had not only the results of the 100 day challenges, but we also added up a new partner to that project with the Netherlands.
And I think the Dutch team already was involved somehow in advance as well because it's a topic which is, I think, also dear to their heart.
And we see that you don't always need to have a document, I don't know, with the light, maybe you can't see it, but they all have folders and it was a mess.
It was really easy to get the results of the 100 day challenges, but for example, deciding on what kind of paper, because each state has a separate paper
for international documents. And if it tried, literal document is being signed, what kind of paper is going to be used for that.
These were topics which were much more important, so to say, to figure out rather than the results and maybe Boris.
So we have a new partner in this endeavor, so to say, and we are going to announce soon what the next challenges are going to be.
And maybe Boris, you can explain, maybe the motivation, but also what you guys expect from such a cooperation with us.
It's completely spontaneous that Boris saw.
Yeah, because we joined the project away after the first talk deadline.
So here I am. Now, we were looking into the problems that come with technological sovereignty and such.
And we were really trying to find, like, how can we have the office tools that fit our civil servants better than the tools that they're using now?
And of course, it was very logical for us to think about like, okay, how are others doing it?
We see this collaboration between two of you, it's already really fruitful and very useful. So when we started that project, we really thought like,
let's take as a base assumption that we are going to first try all of the things that you are doing before we're going to invent our own.
We're fully knowing that at some point we're going to need to do our own things, because we are very different countries, we are organized differently.
And we need to find out how to match this software to our own workings.
And what I really hope and what we're really looking for is that in the longer term, we can build the common infrastructures on our public administrations together in a way that will allow us to express those those particularities of ourselves.
As well as we can. And I think open source and the the fault of collaboration is really the way to be there.
So we're very happy to be to be a part of this.
Cool, thank you.
Do you want to?
Yeah, maybe just saying that we have different approaches and we need to have our, we need to answer the needs of our public agents, our political leaders.
So important is we share what we do.
Like if we are committed to open source and whatever we do, we share it.
And when we find common grounds, we work together.
And we will produce maybe some time different things and sometimes things in common.
And again, we recreate the great common for Europe and we hope more countries can join this.
Yeah.
And if you want to know more about what we are doing, we have our own deaf room in the afternoon, which is right across the whole.
If you want to know more about last week and open desk, we have obviously we have websites.
And also chat to us. Also there are many people from the product teams from last week and open desk.
All of them are going to be in this room today in the afternoon.
And we'll demo one of the second.
Yeah, we will demo the second challenge.
And if you want to talk to us, you can use the third challenge, which is the video conferencing solution.
Yeah.
So, feel free.
Thank you guys.
We are on time.
Yeah.
Thank you.
So, we all do things very differently.
I would recommend Belgium to join, because we already have the colours of the flag in some of the software.
And for us, it was really easy, because we could just turn all the friends software at 90 degrees.
And then it would look very Dutch.
Thank you.
We will now have, I'll let the people get in and get out a bit.
I'm going to wait for the dust to settle down.
Okay.
We don't have chairs for you guys.
We don't have chairs for you all.
No, I think we stand.
Yeah, you're standing.
It can be that maybe we need to get more comfortable.
Maybe we can get in front.
Yeah, I mean, as you like, I mean, yeah, the camera was like, we felt, because there's the video.
Yeah.
So, I don't mind if I'm not in the video, but maybe the camera will be there.
Okay.
So, I like the other camera was like, the cool thing to do here.
Okay.
So, I like, like, I'll say, if I make a question for them and then open the discussion.
Yeah.
So, I can explain what's interesting.
Yeah.
I'm the only introduction.
But I can look myself.
Yeah.
So, if you're standing in the debate for this, I was offering,
to interview you, to the extent of the front.
It was just for the video, it better for you here.
If one of you wants to sit down, it's to sit down.
It's going to be great.
Great.
That's very good.
Go better.
I love that.
Okay.
Well, thank you for everyone who joined us in the meantime.
We will now move on with our panel discussion or also people discussion.
You obviously invited to participate as questions intervened.
And so, you've already met Alexander and Ania, but I need to introduce you to you.
This is Victoria Beltona.
See you off of an exchange, but also a member of the collaboration with Open Desk.
And one of the co-author of the recent report on the EuroStack.
Can I name you co-author?
Okay. Perfect.
And so, this is going to be a bit of a dive into the current discussion about how to fund the public sector.
You've to open for some moment.
The first act is one of them.
There's orders.
And to have basically three different perspectives on this from the political, more private,
perspective, and also the public sector perspective.
But yeah, I think I can actually, I'm sorry.
I think we need to mic.
Okay.
Well, and thanks for promoting me, but I'm not the CEO of the change.
No, I'm just ahead of policy.
I mean, but I mean, maybe later, I mean, unless,
maybe it happened and nobody told me yet, but I don't think so.
So, no, hello.
Hi.
I'm Victor Belldola, the head of policy.
Open exchange.
Which is a German up and so softer maker.
We make stuff like that.
Got empowered in S. So you possibly know some of our software.
And I'm here because I'm originally an engineer that, I mean, already a long time ago,
became interested in this kind of political stuff.
And so, I mean, at a certain point of the career,
moved to this policy realm.
And this is exactly the point where we are now.
So it happened almost by chance that it got involved in this thing called the EuroStack.
It was something that was launched by economists and competition economists and business people
from the public sector and high ranking public sector officers.
We share the same problem as we have.
So they think we are colonized by big tech.
And we need to be independent as Europe for a number of reasons.
But they have the appropriate, in the sense that they don't know how to make the technology happen.
So they were looking for techies and asking them in how can we actual build this.
And so we, I mean, this led to a sort of an opinion campaign and a report that you can find online.
Yeah.
And but the point is that we are at a very important moment.
And this is why open desk and this kind of model is so important.
Europe has been saying that we need technical independence for a long time now.
And as been doing a lot of stuff, I mean, we've been doing a lot of regulation,
which is important. It's useful.
I think it should be enforced.
Actually, no, I am actually worried that I hear start to hear like MEPs and people saying,
we need less regulation that will actually one in a conference three days ago saying,
maybe the problem why we cannot compete with the Americans is that we have the GDPR.
We should abolish the GDPR because it's just bureaucracy.
No, this is not the point.
The point is that we need the regulation that we have been making.
We need to get it enforced even more strongly than it has been done until now.
But then we also need to start building stuff.
And to build stuff, we need money, we need investment.
We need the investment that has an impact.
Europe is investing a lot of money in search projects.
How many commonly used the internet products have come out of the European search projects?
Zero, I think.
So the problem we have as a Europe is to help to spend our money to make something that people can actually use.
And so this is why we, as a company, we are also partners in open desk.
We provide part of our software, which they use for,
I mean, it's open, they could use it without our money.
Last week as well.
Yeah.
So the point is exactly how to make things happen.
And public procurement is the key, because public procurement is money that we as taxpayers have to pay anyway,
because the public office needs technical infrastructure.
And that now it has been spent for 30 years on Microsoft and other big tech stuff,
which has made us more and more dependent.
So if we can just direct even just as a small part of that money into open source software,
made in Europe, we are creating independence, we are creating jobs,
we are creating the tax revenue that we need to keep our welfare up and running and all these things.
And so this is why I'm interested, and this is now the question for the panel.
Well, first of all, well, I think you have different views coming from the political sphere,
and maybe from our practical sphere, but it's this model that can work.
So how hard it is to extend this kind of idea to cover the other sectors that we need.
I mean, we still, I think open desk and laugh it in America now focusing more on like personal productivity,
platforms software, but this is a model maybe that separately even can work for other things that we need.
I mean, like European, so changing social media, whatever.
And maybe from the political sphere is, I mean, do you see the wheel,
that European level to pursue this in practice and the attention to this problem?
Anyway, and then you can say whatever you want, and then we will take questions.
So I'm finishing here.
Once to start.
Thank you.
Thank you for the question.
I would start with Eurostek is a buzzword.
And I think we have.
Yeah, the microphone is for the live stream, apparently.
Ah, I'm sorry.
I hope the live stream can also hear us, but yeah, I would try to speak a bit louder.
So Eurostek, it's first of all, it's just a name.
So we have to identify what does it mean?
So what do we really want to support?
And do we start with the hardware?
Where do we go?
Does it go until the application layer?
So we really have to distinguish where and what do we want to support?
And here, I think it's quite remarkable because just.