The Commissioner-designates' written responses to Members of the European Parliament (MEP) wisely refrained from taking sides on some of the most heated debates.
During the upcoming three-hour hearings where they will be grilled by MEPs, Commissioners-designate are expected to have a harder time holding their cards close.
Here are the questions we really are looking for answers to: Henna Virkkunen, EVP for Tech Sovereignty, Security and Democracy What is your view on telecom market consolidation and the implementation of the 5G toolbox? Should sovereignty requirements remain in the EUCS certification scheme and in what form? Should they also be included in other similar schemes? How do you plan to review the Cyber Security Act and solve the debate of the politicization of technical work and standards? How will you enforce the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, if Donald Trump becomes president and Elon Musk part of his cabinet? Private AI labs will have access to at least one order of magnitude more AI-optimized computing resources compared to European researchers even after the full implementation of AI Factories,. How will you address this disparity? Teresa Ribera Rodríguez, EVP for Clean, Just, and Competitive Transition Do you believe there is a "magic number" of minimum mobile networks operators in national telecom market? Is it three or four? Can the Commission tackle killer acquisitions after the Illumina/GRAIL ruling and if yes, how? Do you plan to relax competition rules to foster the creation of EU champions and if yes, how? Stéphane Séjourné, EVP for Prosperity and Industrial Strategy How do sovereignty requirements fit into the EU's industrial strategy, particularly in the cloud sector? How will the Competitiveness Fund avoid cannibalising basic research and sustainability concerns, particularly for the sake of dual-use technology? Is competitiveness in AI compatible with Europe's climate goals? Roxana Mînzatu, EVP for People, Skills, and Preparedness How will you make sure that top EU tech talent stays in the bloc when competition is so fierce around the world? What actions do you plan to implement to tackle the problems related to skills, labour and AI? Ekaterina Zaharieva, Commissioner for Startups, Research, and Innovation Will the Commission let experts manage be in charge of managing most R&I funding through independent councils as proposed in the Heitor report? Can you guarantee that competitiveness and defence priorities will not cannibalise basic research and sustainability? What do you think about the idea to put all of R&I and strategic spending into a European Competitiveness Fund? Andrius Kubilius, Commissioner for Defense and Space When will you table the EU Space Law? Will it be a directive or a regulation? What is your take on the priority of developing IRIS2 and Italy's use of Elon Musk's StarLink constellation? How much budget should the next MFF foresee for space? Should it include support for new space launchers? What about €1 billion for space mining operations? Michael McGrath, Commissioner for Rule of Law Do you support a revision or annulment of the EU-US Data Privacy Framework, should Donald Trump be re-elected? How do you want to regulate influencers? Do you want to ban dark patterns? What about addictive designs? Do you support the "pay or okay" system? Do you think the GDPR should be weakened to spur innovation? How do you plan to tackle targeted advertising? Do you believe CSAM's so-called "chat control" is the tombstone of data privacy? Valdis Dombrovskis: Commissioner for Simplification How will you "simplify" the diverse governance bodies created under the numerous EU digital tech laws? Do you support introducing minimum thresholds for certain regulations to apply, such as the GDPR?
Feel free to reply to this email with our own questions so we can collate the Brussels buzz! | 