Post by EDPS - European Data Protection Supervisor

*** Human dignity in the age of data: the pending social contract ***   The EDPS Secretary General Leonardo Cervera-Navas joined a panel at Universidad Pontificia Comillas exploring how data protection, digital sovereignty and AI governance can keep human dignity at their core.   He set out why European technological sovereignty will not emerge from deregulating away our fundamental rights. The real obstacles to competitiveness are a fragmented digital market, underdeveloped capital markets, cultural risk-aversion and talent gaps, not strong data protection rules.   Europe has built a rulebook that treats data and dignity as inseparable. The next step is to activate it. Digital sovereignty means the capacity to uphold our own fundamental-rights standards, reinforcing, rather than replacing, the safeguards owed to people. The protection of fundamental rights and innovation are not opposites. Trust is at the basis of resilient economies, and building it requires genuine cooperation with industry and civil society, not a zero-sum game with a single winner.   "Until we build a sovereign, ethically aligned technical stack that serves the public good, our digital humanism will remain reactive: a set of laws regulating technologies built elsewhere, rather than a living infrastructure designed by and for Europeans" the Secretary-General concluded.   Read the speech https://lnkd.in/eju4gtJV