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Against the backdrop of the release of the European Commission’s two-year review of the GDPR now delayed until June, key policymakers and experts joined this virtual event to take stock of the benefits the regulation has unleashed, share their views on the gaps that remain to be addressed, and discuss how they have been impacted by the regulation in the past two years. The session also asked how outstanding challenges and concerns around compliance and enforcement alignment across Member States can be best addressed and will debate issues around the capacity and resilience of the GDPR in facing continuous development of new data-driven innovations. In the context of the current health crisis relating to the Covid-19 outbreak, speakers also examined areas of the regulation that may already need rethinking to enable Europe to fully foster the benefits that data-enabled innovation can bring to our society.
Catch up on past sessions below:
Salla Saastamoinen, Acting Deputy Director General, DG JUST, European Commission Salla Saastamoinen has been acting Director General of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers since February 2020, overseeing a wide range of policy areas, including civil and criminal justice, fundamental rights, data protection, rule of law, equality, citizenship and consumer protection. She is also Director for Civil and Commercial Justice since October 2016. Previously she was the Director for Equality as from 2014. As Director for Civil and Commercial Justice, she is in charge of the development and consolidation of the European area of civil justice, in particular of civil procedural law, private international law, contract law and company law. Salla Saastamoinen has worked in the Commission for 20 years, starting in the Directorate-General for Environment and then working in several areas in the Directorate-General for Justice. Before joining the Commission, Salla Saastamoinen was an associate partner in a law office in Helsinki, Finland. She has a licentiate degree in law from the University of Helsinki, Finland, and post-graduate studies in law from the universities of Saarbrücken, Germany and Zürich, Switzerland.
Andrea Jelinek, Chairwoman, European Data Protection Board On January 1, 2014, Andrea Jelinek, who holds a doctorate degree in law, became head of the Austrian Data Protection Authority. While still a student, she worked as a consultant at the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), later as a trainee lawyer and from 1991 as a legal officer at the General Secretariat of the Austrian Rectors’ Conference. Two years later, she moved to the Ministry of the Interior, where she first worked as a legal officer and later as head of department in the legal and legislative department. One of her specializations – asylum and immigration law – helped determine her further career. From October 2010 to June 2011 she was head of the Vienna Foreign Police. Before that, in 2003, she was the first woman in Vienna to be appointed head of a police commissioner’s office.
Since February 2018, she has also been the Chair of the Article 29 Working Party.
Barbara Cosgrove, Vice President & Chief Privacy Officer, Workday Barbara Cosgrove is vice president, chief privacy officer at Workday, and is responsible for Workday’s global privacy, ML ethics, and compliance strategy and operations.
Barbara has extensive expertise in managing international data protection compliance programs, and implementing data governance policies, technology compliance standards and programs, and privacy-by-design frameworks. She has also served as the chief security officer for Workday.
Prior to joining Workday, Barbara led various compliance programs within Kaiser Permanente and PeopleSoft. Barbara holds a Juris Doctor degree from Widener Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania State University.
Isabella de Michelis, CEO and Founder, ErnieApp
Isabella is ErnieApp founder and CEO. The company has launched in 2019 an innovative consumer mobile internet service called ‘Privacy Knowledge Manager’ (‘PKM’), available on iOS and Google Play and soon to be released on Huawei Gallery and Samsung Galaxy store. The service enables users to audit, visualize and change their privacy permissions on 3rd parties from a single point of mobile access, making it very easy to grant/deny or delete data on social networks and other internet services. The company is based in Dublin (IE). Before launching her tech-venture, Isa headed Qualcomm EMEIA Government Affairs and Technology Policy, worked for networking giant CISCO Systems opening their Brussels based operations and before that worked for several large European companies in the space engineering, telecom and mobile industry. She is a graduate from Geneva University IUHED in Int’l Relations, w/major in competition law and policy; holds an Executive MBA (from UCL); She is a Board Member of Cassa Depositi e Prestiti – Fondo Innovazione Italia (CDP Ventures) the newly formed sovereign fund of the Italian government investing in start up and scale-up companies. She is a Board member of Women in Leadership Europe.
Paul Adamson, Chairman, Forum Europe Paul Adamson is chairman of Forum Europe and founder and editor of Encompass, an online magazine dedicated to covering the European Union and Europe’s place in the world.
Paul is a member of the Centre for European Reform’s advisory board and Rand Europe’s Council of Advisors. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Policy Institute, King’s College London, a patron of the University Association of Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences.
In 2012, Paul was made an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) “for services to promoting understanding of the European Union” and in 2016 he was made a Chevalier in the Ordre national du Mérite by the French government.
Andrea Jelinek, Chair, European Data Protection Board
Salla Saastamoinen, Acting Director General, DG Justice
Barbara Cosgrove, Vice President, Chief Privacy Officer, Workday
Isabella de Michelis, CEO and Founder, ErnieApp
An interactive discussion and networking session – audience members will have the chance to take the floor and give their thoughts on the discussions that have taken place in the previous panel.
Forum Europe are proud to present ‘Under the Spotlight…’ – a strategic series of virtual EU policy events focussing on a range of key policy files and topics across different subject areas.
Working alongside thought-leaders and policymakers, each event will put a specific area ‘under the spotlight’ – providing a platform for a detailed discussion on the policy issues involved. By bringing together key stakeholders in this way, the aim of the series is to support transparency and inclusion in the policymaking process in a format that is accessible to all.
If you have an issue that you would like to see explored as part of the Under the Spotlight series contact James Wilmott at | + 44 (0) 29 20 783020.
A new economic model for Europe?
29 May | 10:30-13:00 CEST
Tackling the challenges & unlocking the benefits
28 May | 14:00-15:40 CEST
Event Platform
This series of events will be taking place using Forum Europe’s virtual solution – Forum Vision. For more details on our virtual solution, please visit forum-vision.com.
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