Hi, welcome everyone to this next session. We're going to talk about how to engage with
policy makers as a civil society. If you're leaving the room, please do so quietly, take
conversations outside. And if you have room next to you, then please move into the rows
as good as you can so that other people may be able to sit down as well.
All right, do you want to join us on stage?
I'll just say Ella and Ania. Just a little behind seeing us back. We'll have some lovely
tape that we have to stand between. So remember to stand on within the tape or you're not visible
within the selected stripes. All right, who of you has already written an email to somebody working
in the European Parliament. That's a handful. And to the commission any time? Do you do
submissions to public consultations and calls for feedback? And to if you follow up those emails
and those PDF documents that you've sent with a phone call. Ah, okay, a couple of people. Of course,
that requires some effort and some time that not everybody has. So it's understandable. But that
would be one of my tips, for example. If I hand in a call for feedback response, then I would
follow up with an email and say, look, I would be happy to talk and maybe I should have introduced
myself. My name is Sebastian. I work for our pal. We're a business association and we represent
open source businesses. And maybe then I'll pass around the mic and let the other
us introduce themselves as well. Thank you, Sebastian. Also for inviting me. My name is Ania.
I work in the European Parliament for an MEP. That means that I'm involved in the political
work. And everything that you have heard this morning is part of my my core work. So if you have
suggestions and ideas later on, you will find my email address and how I will explain to you how
you can get in touch with with your input. Hi, I'm Ella. I'm the head of policy at
every European digital rights. So my job for the last six and a half years has been
advocating towards the EU institutions or really lobbying, but lobbying for human rights rather than
you know, other things they get not suitable. Hi, so for those I didn't have the pleasure to talk
to in the previous talk. My name is Marcel Colyo. I am the policy and advocacy director for Europe
at Access Now, which is an organization defending and extending digital rights of people and communities
at risk. And in my previous life, I was a member of the European Parliament. For instance,
worked on the digital markets act and forward the amendment on the chat platforms and social
networks interoperability, which is now in the legislation somehow. And I'm going to use my
privilege. I'm Jordan Maris. I am the EU policy analyst for the open source initiative,
similarly to Sebastian and Marcel. I've been on both sides of the fence, so I've previously
worked in the European Parliament on the artificial intelligence act and on forgetting the
other one that's bad. The product liability directive among the cyber is an insect, of course,
yeah, please don't for any tomatoes just yet. And I think that's everybody, right?
Yeah, I think that's everybody indeed. And I totally forgot to mention that I mentioned that
I used to work in the European Parliament just only nine years, I can't forget. What is some of
the best and worst examples of lobbying that you had? I will start with a personal one. I have
been lobbied by some folks from Germany, from an association and they hadn't looked me up.
They hadn't looked up my profile. They didn't know that I had a background as a computer scientist
and then they tried to explain open source to me and it's, I appreciate it, it. But they
looked me up. They wouldn't have had to spend the time on it because I, you know,
and tell about how but you must say. When one example came to my mind, but I'm not sure I can
mention it because I don't want to reveal the party that, but I mean, to be honest, I think the
very worst example is, you know, basically hateful comments on social networks or hateful emails.
When people also go that far, that basically threaten you, you know, death, death threats,
like, you approve this and, you know, I will do things that I think is the worst case scenario
for lobbying. I don't recommend that. Actually, on the death threats issue,
in Parliament, it's unfortunately quite a regular occurrence. You should know that when it does happen,
your email gets forwarded to the security team. The security team will either, oh, that's louder.
The security team will probably block the whole domain if it's not Gmail or one of the, you know,
big for email providers, if you send that sort of email. So it's very counterproductive,
not just for you, but for anyone else who uses the same email services to you.
Maybe I then say something about a good practice and something where it was actually positive,
you know, what you, what you should observe and do. First of all, I would like to emphasize that
I'm very, very grateful for everyone who has written in the context of the so-called chat control
campaign. This has very, very much moved the European Parliament and has had an effect.
I can personally confirm this from left to right in particular, right? Unfortunately, but this is
unfortunately also the majority that we have right now in the European Parliament. And I want to
continue to encourage you to do that. This is these emails do reach us. There are offices that
will create rules, but you can trick a rule very easily by just changing the subject nine or by
tweaking it a little bit. And please continue to do that because it is direct access to the
MEPs and we read these emails. We cannot, we cannot make emails disappear. It will be in our
inboxes and I'm very, very thankful for everyone who has done that. And there is another possibility
now with so-called chat control, 1.0. So please use the opportunity to reach out to your
two MEPs. Also, I don't know in terms of languages, use the different languages because in terms
of good practice, we only reply to messages that are also in the language of my constituency.
So this is also in terms of management. You can imagine we receive a lot of messages. So we focus
on the ones that are also from our constituents. So in this case, from my members constituency.
And I can assume that this is the same good practice from our offices. And other than that,
engage. And this is also something that Sebastian said, do the follow-up. Don't just write the email.
Calling is a bit intrusive because it's also, you might catch me in a bad moment where I'm
where I have to write something very intensively and have to focus. However, follow-up, say,
okay, I'm sorry, I did not receive a message to my mail from last week or 10 days ago, etc.
Will you mind? Stay polite, obviously, but insist. And this is what I would like to emphasize.
If I can only online, that's also my positive example. Everybody who followed up to an email
that I had overlooked because of the thousands of emails you received on a daily and weekly basis
in the environment, following up always helps. I'm the only one that's not been in the Parliament
site, or like a bit of an imposter answering this question, but something we did a few years ago
that felt really effective was, and we're quite lucky as Edry, we were able to bring 30
of arc and of members and volunteers and partners, two Brussels. And we first spent two
really intense days learning together about how the EU institutions work. And before people
they'd even arrived, actually six to eight weeks in advance, we'd got them to request meetings
with MEPs from their country knowing that they were going to be here in Brussels. And so it was a
huge logistics challenge. But then we spent those two days also getting up to speed in the topics
and everyone practiced a lot how to make the topics and this was about fighting facial recognition.
So it had a lot of salience, for a lot of different people, for different reasons.
And everyone practiced how they would make it personal to them, but also personal to the member
of the European Parliament, or the adviser that they were speaking to, so being knowledgeable,
what committees do they set on, what report do they written, and through doing that we were
able to meet 75 MEPs in space of four days, which normally for me in my little team here in Brussels,
that's probably how many we might meet in an entire year. So kind of doing it together,
we had solidarity, we, someone got us a conference room that we used as our base camp,
we got sandwiches, and we kind of really made it like a team thing, and that was really nice.
And we got what we wanted as well, the thing we were advocating for, it was the combination of
a three-year campaign, but still, it was great.
Could I just bounce back very quickly on something you just said about personalised?
One thing that actually, in my opinion, or from my side in the Parliament, made a massive difference
was when the email we received was something personal. So I'll take an example right now,
there is a consultation open on the open-source digital ecosystem strategy. I think some of you might be aware.
The previous version of that strategy has funded lots of open-source projects that you know and love.
KDE, next cloud, mastered on, to name a couple.
Talk about them when you're replying. Tell them about the specific project that you have
liked, and so we want more funding for this sort of thing, and just wanted to take this opportunity
to advertise, that's a really good idea. So, are we, yeah, well you start opening the audience
questions. I can maybe ask you one question, how do you reach to a right person, but maybe you want to go
to a right person? Yeah, also wanted on the kind of good practices. Some of the elements have already
been mentioned, but maybe I would like to, you know, wrap it in a perspective of a member of the
European Parliament, which I was in the previous term. So basically, one thing is the email address
of the member of the European Parliament is managed by the assistance of the member, and there's
thousands of emails. So it's really important really to kind of stand out, you know, so that
you're, if you send a message, think about like what would this make important? Usually,
members of the European Parliament wants to be re-elected. So if the same type of message going in
the same direction is received a thousand times, there's something, you know, the member will think
about, like, maybe this is something I need to pay attention to. So that I think is a very good
practice. Second is just don't be afraid, you know, you are a concerned citizen. You are not expected
to be an expert and advocacy or lobbying. So if you don't have an argument or a country argument
to something that has been replied, then it's not a big deal, and you can, you know, ask that question
in a community that you are like, how would you reply to this? And next time you do better,
it's no problem at all. Third, you don't necessarily need to talk to the MEP. You can talk to the
assistance, because they basically concentrate everything for the MEP, and then they, you know,
like, present it to the MEP in some sort of a package. And last is they actually even have phones.
So if you're not afraid to actually talk, and if you can even call to the office, it's not really
a problem. You can even ask if you can talk to the MEP, which you will most probably be said,
no, but at the same moment that will highlight how important you think the issue is, and then you
will probably get a couple of minutes of conversation with the assistant. Okay, plus one that doesn't
need to be the MEP, or if it's the commission, you know, the head of unit. Like nine times out
of 10 in my work, these folks are a hundred times more useful than these folks, no effect, like,
okay, so I'm not, no, but, you know what I mean? All right, do we have questions in the audience?
So I'm going to ask you your first question. So there's a lot of talk about communicating with
Parliament here. I also spend a lot of my time communicating with the commission.
And so recently there have been a lot of consultations. They come out clearly written for someone
other than me with a lot of questions that are directed to somebody who is not me. Do I have to
answer all the questions in those consultation surveys? Or can I just tell people what they,
what I want to say? The problem with the consultations is that the data is aggregated and
in the end, it will be only judged on the basis of the questionnaire. So even if the question is
asking, do you want pest or cholera? And you don't want to answer this question because it's
pointless or doesn't help your opinion or cause, it will be counted that way. So in that case,
it is unfortunate that these questioners are set up, but also industry is complaining. So this is always
something that makes me a little bit gives me sharp and foiter because they also complain that
these questions are insinuating already a certain result. So there is only other than changing
this kind of style and this has to come from very high up. I'm afraid that there will be no
solution. Lovely thank you. So I'm ready for a question. I'd like to start with a question
from somebody who does not identify as my own. While you're working, can I add something?
Yeah, so it's going to take a while. For the survey question is, I absolutely agree with
Andrea, for the open-ended ones, you can subvert the questions, you can ignore questions,
but do so strategically, pick the questions that you want to ignore strategically. And if you think
there's an answer to that question, which might not necessarily be the most important thing for you,
but which could help your cause, then answer it that way. And also, because we are seeing a trend of
consultations getting more and more rigid and less and less useful for our purposes,
but you can reach out to people at the commission in other ways. And again, they're trying to
lock it down, trying to make it even harder for you to know who the right people are for something.
But you can also give them a call and you can ask who is the person in charge of x-topic or x-file.
It always works. You get the name, you get the contact email address. But also, a lot of the
people in the commission like to show off on LinkedIn when they're doing things. And I find
so much just from people like holding a policy document in a photo on LinkedIn. So if you're on LinkedIn,
it helps. I have a question and like full disclosure, I work quite a bit with those,
with those faults. You talk to a lot about this individual way to influence what the policy makers
are doing. What about the more coordinated efforts? Because I used to work at open forum,
Europe where there is the open source policy discussion group. It's quite open to developers
whoever wants to join. Because it's not that easy for a very technical person who is just interested
in one particular potential problem. We saw that in the CRA, suddenly we realized that we need
to be in touch with the more fully techy people and not lobbyists who work in Brussels. So yeah,
any thoughts on the need for coordination? How people can get engaged in that? How do you see
how it can be the most effective? It's a pain point for me personally because I until last year
and I've been working on digital policy for quite a while. I wasn't even aware of this fabulous conference.
So I have a big nine spot. I'm not my thanks to Sebastian and thanks to Jordan. I'm now more aware
about the importance and the emphasis of open source policy. But before that, due to the variety of
other subjects, I also have to cover. I was not aware, but something like this is already very much
coordinated and yet it has not reached me. So I'm curious and this is something where you please
also come in with valuable feedback back to me. How you can get more organized and how you can get
more channels to me. As my email address is also public, but I will also share it later on here.
Yeah, I would love to be reached out more to and also in a coordinated way. But for that,
unfortunately, I do not have an immediate solution, but when seeking actually that input.
Just a brief edition as well because I think Polar Rays is an amazing point which is the strength
of us compared to multi-billion dollar tech companies is our numbers and it's our community.
You know, we're regularly going up. The people who are here, who are here, we have companies who
have multi-million euro lobbying budgets, we who have 30 lobbyists devoted to a singular cause.
And we can still win and we can still win because of you guys because because when we can
work together to pressure the European Commission and a lot of MEPs, still notice that like they
still weigh citizens' opinions more heavily than corporate opinions. So having you guys
and having you participate, having you pressure them, it really actually works a lot better than
a lot of people believe it does. I will take the next question from any member of the audience.
First one was the up there.
Is this good? Yeah. Thank you very much for the presentation and the talks I really appreciate
your efforts, guys. I am not an EU citizen, I am a resident in Germany. My question is,
when I write, I'm very passionate about these topics and I write my reviews, I write on my
blog, I write the feedback on the EU websites and everywhere. And there's always a tag next to my
name, non-EU. So my question is, do my opinions matter in general?
I'd like to say something positive, but I may be feeling a bit cynical about it because actually
all the discourse that you hear is always doing stuff for citizens and we try really hard as
editor to talk about people, communities because it's not just those that have citizenship
that matter and who's rights matter, but until last summer I was also not an EU citizen.
And one of my dumbest moments in my career, Edry, was working really hard on something called
a European Citizens Initiative, which some of you can see some eyes rolling, so some of you
are familiar with those. It's like a really, really heavy petition and I co-ran one for several years
and I wasn't allowed to sign my own kind of petition that I put my blood sweat in tears into.
So I think there are a lot of lawmakers who do recognize that residents but also undocumented
people matter and that they, as a member of the Parliament or another institution,
you also represent those people, but I think we also all have to keep making sure to highlight
the fact that undocumented people still deserve rights and it's not just citizens, but it's also
a residence matter and have a voice.
Thank you for being here. I've got a question. A couple of years ago I started a study of politics
in Leider. I eventually switched to a study of communication and multimedia design
for a reason that I really want to, oh sorry, I really want to improve the communication surrounding
privacy, security and freedom of democracy in the European Union. And one of the things I run into
often is when I talk to my old student mates and other acquaintances is that they've already been
read in by the lobbyists and they've read the reports and how do I
effectively communicate the inclusiveness of a proposition like chat control without it turning into a
godwin or something similar. Any tips? So this is my personal opinion so others might disagree with
me but a lot depends on how you want to be perceived in lawmaker's eyes and that's something you
really need to think about when you're writing your message. So I'm going to let you in under a little
secret. Politicians don't actually know all that much about the subjects that they're regulating.
So what they really and nor do their staffers in many cases. So what they what I'm going to say
we rely on when we're trying to write or when we're trying to amend law is we sort of work at
okay, where's the middle ground? Where are the people who are extreme on both send of the spectrum?
Where are the people who are moderate on both ends of the spectrum? And the EU way is often that okay
the position that's more or less in the middle, the right answer has got to be somewhere in there.
So let's say you you want to move the window in your direction. In some cases if there are already
a lot of people making the extreme argument you know chat control is a horrific infringement on our
fundamental rights and privacy 100% correct and I know a lot of people here will agree.
You can do that but if you want to move the window a little more it might also be good to come
a bit from another angle and say well you know these technologies are not tested the trials
that have been done have created massive numbers of false positives. How a law enforcement going
to manage considering they can't already manage the existing workload? How are they going to deal
with this avalanche of false positives? So take it from another angle and usually taking it from
so think about what the purpose of the law is, the purpose of the law is protecting children.
Think about how the approach they're taking doesn't achieve that outcome and then tell them about that
and so there is room for both, there is room for the sort of activist approach and there is room for
this approach but that is my recommendation if you're worried that your voice isn't being heard because
there are already a lot of voices at that point in the spectrum then that's something you can try as well.
You specifically asked about how can you optimize your thing that you want to communicate about
and I think it's always worth if you can spend the time to find out more about the person you're
talking to if you're not blanket sending to everyone and find a way to make the story work with them
for I guess conservatives or a lot of liberals it would be worth trying to connect with some
business issue maybe encryption is important for businesses and for trust would be messaging that
I would choose in that case and so forth if you're talking to somebody from the left then you do a
bit of more fundamental rights I suppose but find out as much as you can about the individual
in as much time as you can afford. Okay we have time for one more question and I've seen
some of the back and I need exercise.
Who designed this like this yet? Hey am I close to the mic now? So I think you might already have touched
up on it but let's say you're a European NGO and you're going to send a mail merge to all
MEPs how much time would you recommend that it's worth to spend to for example write something
personal about what the MEP had done if you and if you can answer a research on everyone would you
recommend going on the repertoire or like an MEP who might have said something about it but are
not like responsible for the question. How do you personally suggest that one can think of to
make it a bit individualized with not too much effort? I guess definitely look up who is working on
the file there is a website of the European Parliament if it's Parliament stuff that's called
the French OEIL if you look at it's called the legislative observatory of the European Parliament
and it's not always 100% up to date because it's take some time sometimes for the services to update
the material and you know it's there there's people working there sometimes it takes a while
but then you have the list of the reporters the shadow reporters for the other different committees
that might be responsible for a file you could look up their names there and then if you have
more time to spend look them up individually I was told to subscribe to that mailing list to
because we asked before how can we organize better as a community and open for a
Europe as a place where there is a mailing list that already organizes in particular open source
interests so do join that mailing list. I think you need to a bit like dissect the issue and
analyze you know what our neighbor may be some common commonalities in your argument when it
comes to like a group of MEPs for instance so you can first of course you can individualize those
that are the most relevant which is the reporter and the shadow reporters but then if you want to
like mass email all MEPs then I think it's good to think about okay what why is why does this
matter from a social democrat perspective why does this matter from a German perspective so
you need to find if there is a common angle and then you can basically sell at a group of MEPs
and target them with the same message but socialists will you know hear different things
when or will react positive to different things than a neoliberal for instance.
Thanks to dedicated former and current appas I'm including myself now in all humility
just ask me in case or ask via colleagues like myself or like Ella who to contact and they will
dispatch you then to people like me I may not be able to answer you in the second maybe not even
within the week but I will get back to you and help you with a more specific angle on something if
you say like my seller correctly emphasize this is very particular for Germany because of the
past of Stasi and so on we're just talking about chat control but for Spain they have a different
history about this I will be able to give you a better angle about it so don't be afraid to reach
out and to use a network and to benefit also from the network that this amazing conference has created
thank you everyone we are at time can we have a round of applause for our panel
so we now have a short pause for a closed-end crew to tackle the equipment