At the beginning of this year, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Emmanuel Macron signed the new French-German friendship treaty, and in the process agreed to a strengthened cooperation in the area of research and digital transformation. Both countries want to campaign for ethical guidelines for new technologies at the international level and collaborate on promoting AI as cutting-edge technology.
As a result, in January eco – Association of the Internet Industry and the French telecommunications association FFTélécoms also began a dialogue process, in order to shed light on the political developments and discussions on both sides of the River Rhine, and to develop a better understanding of the motivations and challenges of both countries. Dialogue was thus to be intensified, especially on the topics of e-Evidence, responsibility & security in the Internet, and encryption. In the course of recent months, further aspects have been added. For this reason, a delegation from eco sought dialogue with French partners, as well as representatives of the ministries of economics and finance and the Assemblée Nationale, in the headquarters of FFTélécoms on 7 November. In the course of this meeting, the Association of the Internet Industry met with the following representatives of France’s industry and politics:
- Michel Rao, Project Director for the Data Economy (Direction Générale des Entreprises) at the French Ministry of the Economy and Finance
- Olivier Japiot, Chair of the Higher Council for Literary and Artistic Property
- MP Eric Bothorel, La RĂ©publique en Marche, Member of the Economic Affairs Committee
- MP Paula Forteza, La RĂ©publique en Marche, Member of the Legal Committee, former Rapporteur on the transposition of the GDPR
For this French-German dialogue the overriding topics on the agenda were: Data policy in Germany and France in the light of artificial intelligence, and the forthcoming evaluation of the General Data Protection Regulation.
