WEBVTT

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Hi, welcome everyone to this next session. We're going to talk about how to engage with

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policy makers as a civil society. If you're leaving the room, please do so quietly, take

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conversations outside. And if you have room next to you, then please move into the rows

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as good as you can so that other people may be able to sit down as well.

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All right, do you want to join us on stage?

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I'll just say Ella and Ania. Just a little behind seeing us back. We'll have some lovely

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tape that we have to stand between. So remember to stand on within the tape or you're not visible

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within the selected stripes. All right, who of you has already written an email to somebody working

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in the European Parliament. That's a handful. And to the commission any time? Do you do

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submissions to public consultations and calls for feedback? And to if you follow up those emails

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and those PDF documents that you've sent with a phone call. Ah, okay, a couple of people. Of course,

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that requires some effort and some time that not everybody has. So it's understandable. But that

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would be one of my tips, for example. If I hand in a call for feedback response, then I would

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follow up with an email and say, look, I would be happy to talk and maybe I should have introduced

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myself. My name is Sebastian. I work for our pal. We're a business association and we represent

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open source businesses. And maybe then I'll pass around the mic and let the other

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us introduce themselves as well. Thank you, Sebastian. Also for inviting me. My name is Ania.

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I work in the European Parliament for an MEP. That means that I'm involved in the political

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work. And everything that you have heard this morning is part of my my core work. So if you have

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suggestions and ideas later on, you will find my email address and how I will explain to you how

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you can get in touch with with your input. Hi, I'm Ella. I'm the head of policy at

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every European digital rights. So my job for the last six and a half years has been

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advocating towards the EU institutions or really lobbying, but lobbying for human rights rather than

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you know, other things they get not suitable. Hi, so for those I didn't have the pleasure to talk

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to in the previous talk. My name is Marcel Colyo. I am the policy and advocacy director for Europe

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at Access Now, which is an organization defending and extending digital rights of people and communities

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at risk. And in my previous life, I was a member of the European Parliament. For instance,

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worked on the digital markets act and forward the amendment on the chat platforms and social

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networks interoperability, which is now in the legislation somehow. And I'm going to use my

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privilege. I'm Jordan Maris. I am the EU policy analyst for the open source initiative,

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similarly to Sebastian and Marcel. I've been on both sides of the fence, so I've previously

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worked in the European Parliament on the artificial intelligence act and on forgetting the

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other one that's bad. The product liability directive among the cyber is an insect, of course,

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yeah, please don't for any tomatoes just yet. And I think that's everybody, right?

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Yeah, I think that's everybody indeed. And I totally forgot to mention that I mentioned that

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I used to work in the European Parliament just only nine years, I can't forget. What is some of

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the best and worst examples of lobbying that you had? I will start with a personal one. I have

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been lobbied by some folks from Germany, from an association and they hadn't looked me up.

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They hadn't looked up my profile. They didn't know that I had a background as a computer scientist

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and then they tried to explain open source to me and it's, I appreciate it, it. But they

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looked me up. They wouldn't have had to spend the time on it because I, you know,

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and tell about how but you must say. When one example came to my mind, but I'm not sure I can

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mention it because I don't want to reveal the party that, but I mean, to be honest, I think the

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very worst example is, you know, basically hateful comments on social networks or hateful emails.

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When people also go that far, that basically threaten you, you know, death, death threats,

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like, you approve this and, you know, I will do things that I think is the worst case scenario

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for lobbying. I don't recommend that. Actually, on the death threats issue,

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in Parliament, it's unfortunately quite a regular occurrence. You should know that when it does happen,

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your email gets forwarded to the security team. The security team will either, oh, that's louder.

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The security team will probably block the whole domain if it's not Gmail or one of the, you know,

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big for email providers, if you send that sort of email. So it's very counterproductive,

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not just for you, but for anyone else who uses the same email services to you.

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Maybe I then say something about a good practice and something where it was actually positive,

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you know, what you, what you should observe and do. First of all, I would like to emphasize that

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I'm very, very grateful for everyone who has written in the context of the so-called chat control

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campaign. This has very, very much moved the European Parliament and has had an effect.

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I can personally confirm this from left to right in particular, right? Unfortunately, but this is

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unfortunately also the majority that we have right now in the European Parliament. And I want to

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continue to encourage you to do that. This is these emails do reach us. There are offices that

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will create rules, but you can trick a rule very easily by just changing the subject nine or by

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tweaking it a little bit. And please continue to do that because it is direct access to the

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MEPs and we read these emails. We cannot, we cannot make emails disappear. It will be in our

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inboxes and I'm very, very thankful for everyone who has done that. And there is another possibility

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now with so-called chat control, 1.0. So please use the opportunity to reach out to your

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two MEPs. Also, I don't know in terms of languages, use the different languages because in terms

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of good practice, we only reply to messages that are also in the language of my constituency.

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So this is also in terms of management. You can imagine we receive a lot of messages. So we focus

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on the ones that are also from our constituents. So in this case, from my members constituency.

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And I can assume that this is the same good practice from our offices. And other than that,

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engage. And this is also something that Sebastian said, do the follow-up. Don't just write the email.

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Calling is a bit intrusive because it's also, you might catch me in a bad moment where I'm

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where I have to write something very intensively and have to focus. However, follow-up, say,

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okay, I'm sorry, I did not receive a message to my mail from last week or 10 days ago, etc.

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Will you mind? Stay polite, obviously, but insist. And this is what I would like to emphasize.

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If I can only online, that's also my positive example. Everybody who followed up to an email

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that I had overlooked because of the thousands of emails you received on a daily and weekly basis

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in the environment, following up always helps. I'm the only one that's not been in the Parliament

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site, or like a bit of an imposter answering this question, but something we did a few years ago

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that felt really effective was, and we're quite lucky as Edry, we were able to bring 30

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of arc and of members and volunteers and partners, two Brussels. And we first spent two

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really intense days learning together about how the EU institutions work. And before people

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they'd even arrived, actually six to eight weeks in advance, we'd got them to request meetings

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with MEPs from their country knowing that they were going to be here in Brussels. And so it was a

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huge logistics challenge. But then we spent those two days also getting up to speed in the topics

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and everyone practiced a lot how to make the topics and this was about fighting facial recognition.

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So it had a lot of salience, for a lot of different people, for different reasons.

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And everyone practiced how they would make it personal to them, but also personal to the member

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of the European Parliament, or the adviser that they were speaking to, so being knowledgeable,

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what committees do they set on, what report do they written, and through doing that we were

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able to meet 75 MEPs in space of four days, which normally for me in my little team here in Brussels,

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that's probably how many we might meet in an entire year. So kind of doing it together,

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we had solidarity, we, someone got us a conference room that we used as our base camp,

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we got sandwiches, and we kind of really made it like a team thing, and that was really nice.

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And we got what we wanted as well, the thing we were advocating for, it was the combination of

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a three-year campaign, but still, it was great.

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Could I just bounce back very quickly on something you just said about personalised?

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One thing that actually, in my opinion, or from my side in the Parliament, made a massive difference

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was when the email we received was something personal. So I'll take an example right now,

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there is a consultation open on the open-source digital ecosystem strategy. I think some of you might be aware.

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The previous version of that strategy has funded lots of open-source projects that you know and love.

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KDE, next cloud, mastered on, to name a couple.

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Talk about them when you're replying. Tell them about the specific project that you have

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liked, and so we want more funding for this sort of thing, and just wanted to take this opportunity

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to advertise, that's a really good idea. So, are we, yeah, well you start opening the audience

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questions. I can maybe ask you one question, how do you reach to a right person, but maybe you want to go

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to a right person? Yeah, also wanted on the kind of good practices. Some of the elements have already

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been mentioned, but maybe I would like to, you know, wrap it in a perspective of a member of the

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European Parliament, which I was in the previous term. So basically, one thing is the email address

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of the member of the European Parliament is managed by the assistance of the member, and there's

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thousands of emails. So it's really important really to kind of stand out, you know, so that

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you're, if you send a message, think about like what would this make important? Usually,

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members of the European Parliament wants to be re-elected. So if the same type of message going in

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the same direction is received a thousand times, there's something, you know, the member will think

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about, like, maybe this is something I need to pay attention to. So that I think is a very good

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practice. Second is just don't be afraid, you know, you are a concerned citizen. You are not expected

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to be an expert and advocacy or lobbying. So if you don't have an argument or a country argument

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to something that has been replied, then it's not a big deal, and you can, you know, ask that question

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in a community that you are like, how would you reply to this? And next time you do better,

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it's no problem at all. Third, you don't necessarily need to talk to the MEP. You can talk to the

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assistance, because they basically concentrate everything for the MEP, and then they, you know,

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like, present it to the MEP in some sort of a package. And last is they actually even have phones.

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So if you're not afraid to actually talk, and if you can even call to the office, it's not really

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a problem. You can even ask if you can talk to the MEP, which you will most probably be said,

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no, but at the same moment that will highlight how important you think the issue is, and then you

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will probably get a couple of minutes of conversation with the assistant. Okay, plus one that doesn't

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need to be the MEP, or if it's the commission, you know, the head of unit. Like nine times out

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of 10 in my work, these folks are a hundred times more useful than these folks, no effect, like,

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okay, so I'm not, no, but, you know what I mean? All right, do we have questions in the audience?

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So I'm going to ask you your first question. So there's a lot of talk about communicating with

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Parliament here. I also spend a lot of my time communicating with the commission.

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And so recently there have been a lot of consultations. They come out clearly written for someone

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other than me with a lot of questions that are directed to somebody who is not me. Do I have to

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answer all the questions in those consultation surveys? Or can I just tell people what they,

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what I want to say? The problem with the consultations is that the data is aggregated and

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in the end, it will be only judged on the basis of the questionnaire. So even if the question is

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asking, do you want pest or cholera? And you don't want to answer this question because it's

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pointless or doesn't help your opinion or cause, it will be counted that way. So in that case,

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it is unfortunate that these questioners are set up, but also industry is complaining. So this is always

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something that makes me a little bit gives me sharp and foiter because they also complain that

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these questions are insinuating already a certain result. So there is only other than changing

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this kind of style and this has to come from very high up. I'm afraid that there will be no

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solution. Lovely thank you. So I'm ready for a question. I'd like to start with a question

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from somebody who does not identify as my own. While you're working, can I add something?

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Yeah, so it's going to take a while. For the survey question is, I absolutely agree with

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Andrea, for the open-ended ones, you can subvert the questions, you can ignore questions,

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but do so strategically, pick the questions that you want to ignore strategically. And if you think

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there's an answer to that question, which might not necessarily be the most important thing for you,

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but which could help your cause, then answer it that way. And also, because we are seeing a trend of

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consultations getting more and more rigid and less and less useful for our purposes,

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but you can reach out to people at the commission in other ways. And again, they're trying to

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lock it down, trying to make it even harder for you to know who the right people are for something.

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But you can also give them a call and you can ask who is the person in charge of x-topic or x-file.

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It always works. You get the name, you get the contact email address. But also, a lot of the

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people in the commission like to show off on LinkedIn when they're doing things. And I find

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so much just from people like holding a policy document in a photo on LinkedIn. So if you're on LinkedIn,

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it helps. I have a question and like full disclosure, I work quite a bit with those,

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with those faults. You talk to a lot about this individual way to influence what the policy makers

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are doing. What about the more coordinated efforts? Because I used to work at open forum,

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Europe where there is the open source policy discussion group. It's quite open to developers

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whoever wants to join. Because it's not that easy for a very technical person who is just interested

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in one particular potential problem. We saw that in the CRA, suddenly we realized that we need

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to be in touch with the more fully techy people and not lobbyists who work in Brussels. So yeah,

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any thoughts on the need for coordination? How people can get engaged in that? How do you see

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how it can be the most effective? It's a pain point for me personally because I until last year

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and I've been working on digital policy for quite a while. I wasn't even aware of this fabulous conference.

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So I have a big nine spot. I'm not my thanks to Sebastian and thanks to Jordan. I'm now more aware

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about the importance and the emphasis of open source policy. But before that, due to the variety of

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other subjects, I also have to cover. I was not aware, but something like this is already very much

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coordinated and yet it has not reached me. So I'm curious and this is something where you please

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also come in with valuable feedback back to me. How you can get more organized and how you can get

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more channels to me. As my email address is also public, but I will also share it later on here.

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Yeah, I would love to be reached out more to and also in a coordinated way. But for that,

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unfortunately, I do not have an immediate solution, but when seeking actually that input.

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Just a brief edition as well because I think Polar Rays is an amazing point which is the strength

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of us compared to multi-billion dollar tech companies is our numbers and it's our community.

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You know, we're regularly going up. The people who are here, who are here, we have companies who

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have multi-million euro lobbying budgets, we who have 30 lobbyists devoted to a singular cause.

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And we can still win and we can still win because of you guys because because when we can

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work together to pressure the European Commission and a lot of MEPs, still notice that like they

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still weigh citizens' opinions more heavily than corporate opinions. So having you guys

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and having you participate, having you pressure them, it really actually works a lot better than

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a lot of people believe it does. I will take the next question from any member of the audience.

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First one was the up there.

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Is this good? Yeah. Thank you very much for the presentation and the talks I really appreciate

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your efforts, guys. I am not an EU citizen, I am a resident in Germany. My question is,

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when I write, I'm very passionate about these topics and I write my reviews, I write on my

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blog, I write the feedback on the EU websites and everywhere. And there's always a tag next to my

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name, non-EU. So my question is, do my opinions matter in general?

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I'd like to say something positive, but I may be feeling a bit cynical about it because actually

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all the discourse that you hear is always doing stuff for citizens and we try really hard as

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editor to talk about people, communities because it's not just those that have citizenship

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that matter and who's rights matter, but until last summer I was also not an EU citizen.

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And one of my dumbest moments in my career, Edry, was working really hard on something called

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a European Citizens Initiative, which some of you can see some eyes rolling, so some of you

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are familiar with those. It's like a really, really heavy petition and I co-ran one for several years

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and I wasn't allowed to sign my own kind of petition that I put my blood sweat in tears into.

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So I think there are a lot of lawmakers who do recognize that residents but also undocumented

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people matter and that they, as a member of the Parliament or another institution,

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you also represent those people, but I think we also all have to keep making sure to highlight

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the fact that undocumented people still deserve rights and it's not just citizens, but it's also

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a residence matter and have a voice.

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Thank you for being here. I've got a question. A couple of years ago I started a study of politics

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in Leider. I eventually switched to a study of communication and multimedia design

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for a reason that I really want to, oh sorry, I really want to improve the communication surrounding

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privacy, security and freedom of democracy in the European Union. And one of the things I run into

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often is when I talk to my old student mates and other acquaintances is that they've already been

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read in by the lobbyists and they've read the reports and how do I

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effectively communicate the inclusiveness of a proposition like chat control without it turning into a

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godwin or something similar. Any tips? So this is my personal opinion so others might disagree with

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me but a lot depends on how you want to be perceived in lawmaker's eyes and that's something you

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really need to think about when you're writing your message. So I'm going to let you in under a little

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secret. Politicians don't actually know all that much about the subjects that they're regulating.

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So what they really and nor do their staffers in many cases. So what they what I'm going to say

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we rely on when we're trying to write or when we're trying to amend law is we sort of work at

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okay, where's the middle ground? Where are the people who are extreme on both send of the spectrum?

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Where are the people who are moderate on both ends of the spectrum? And the EU way is often that okay

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the position that's more or less in the middle, the right answer has got to be somewhere in there.

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So let's say you you want to move the window in your direction. In some cases if there are already

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a lot of people making the extreme argument you know chat control is a horrific infringement on our

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fundamental rights and privacy 100% correct and I know a lot of people here will agree.

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You can do that but if you want to move the window a little more it might also be good to come

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a bit from another angle and say well you know these technologies are not tested the trials

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that have been done have created massive numbers of false positives. How a law enforcement going

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to manage considering they can't already manage the existing workload? How are they going to deal

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with this avalanche of false positives? So take it from another angle and usually taking it from

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so think about what the purpose of the law is, the purpose of the law is protecting children.

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Think about how the approach they're taking doesn't achieve that outcome and then tell them about that

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and so there is room for both, there is room for the sort of activist approach and there is room for

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this approach but that is my recommendation if you're worried that your voice isn't being heard because

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there are already a lot of voices at that point in the spectrum then that's something you can try as well.

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You specifically asked about how can you optimize your thing that you want to communicate about

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and I think it's always worth if you can spend the time to find out more about the person you're

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talking to if you're not blanket sending to everyone and find a way to make the story work with them

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for I guess conservatives or a lot of liberals it would be worth trying to connect with some

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business issue maybe encryption is important for businesses and for trust would be messaging that

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I would choose in that case and so forth if you're talking to somebody from the left then you do a

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bit of more fundamental rights I suppose but find out as much as you can about the individual

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in as much time as you can afford. Okay we have time for one more question and I've seen

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some of the back and I need exercise.

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Who designed this like this yet? Hey am I close to the mic now? So I think you might already have touched

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up on it but let's say you're a European NGO and you're going to send a mail merge to all

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MEPs how much time would you recommend that it's worth to spend to for example write something

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personal about what the MEP had done if you and if you can answer a research on everyone would you

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recommend going on the repertoire or like an MEP who might have said something about it but are

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not like responsible for the question. How do you personally suggest that one can think of to

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make it a bit individualized with not too much effort? I guess definitely look up who is working on

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the file there is a website of the European Parliament if it's Parliament stuff that's called

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the French OEIL if you look at it's called the legislative observatory of the European Parliament

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and it's not always 100% up to date because it's take some time sometimes for the services to update

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the material and you know it's there there's people working there sometimes it takes a while

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but then you have the list of the reporters the shadow reporters for the other different committees

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that might be responsible for a file you could look up their names there and then if you have

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more time to spend look them up individually I was told to subscribe to that mailing list to

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because we asked before how can we organize better as a community and open for a

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Europe as a place where there is a mailing list that already organizes in particular open source

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interests so do join that mailing list. I think you need to a bit like dissect the issue and

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analyze you know what our neighbor may be some common commonalities in your argument when it

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comes to like a group of MEPs for instance so you can first of course you can individualize those

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that are the most relevant which is the reporter and the shadow reporters but then if you want to

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like mass email all MEPs then I think it's good to think about okay what why is why does this

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matter from a social democrat perspective why does this matter from a German perspective so

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you need to find if there is a common angle and then you can basically sell at a group of MEPs

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and target them with the same message but socialists will you know hear different things

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when or will react positive to different things than a neoliberal for instance.

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Thanks to dedicated former and current appas I'm including myself now in all humility

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just ask me in case or ask via colleagues like myself or like Ella who to contact and they will

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dispatch you then to people like me I may not be able to answer you in the second maybe not even

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within the week but I will get back to you and help you with a more specific angle on something if

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you say like my seller correctly emphasize this is very particular for Germany because of the

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past of Stasi and so on we're just talking about chat control but for Spain they have a different

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history about this I will be able to give you a better angle about it so don't be afraid to reach

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out and to use a network and to benefit also from the network that this amazing conference has created

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thank you everyone we are at time can we have a round of applause for our panel

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so we now have a short pause for a closed-end crew to tackle the equipment