Samuel Stolton Archives

MEPs at the European Parliament backed plans on Tuesday (2 October) to ensure that at least 30 per cent of content provided by online media platforms such as Amazon and Netflix is European.

EPP MEP and lead candidate for Jean-Claude Junker's job as the next European Commission president, Manfred Weber, threw down the gauntlet on Friday (28 September), suggesting that he may support a breakup of Facebook and Whatsapp.

The EU's Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová has put pressure on Facebook to disclose further details of the massive security breach that impacted around fifty million users last week.

Member states from across the European Union agreed on Friday (28 September) to take a leading role in the development of high-performance computers on the continent, an area where Europe has fallen seriously behind China and the US.

The Italian state broadcaster, Rai, has appointed a Eurosceptic journalist with a history of publicising fake news as its new president.

The EU faces an enormous challenge to counter the threat of disinformation ahead of the 2019 European elections, digital commissioner Mariya Gabriel and parliament president Antonio Tajani said on Thursday (27 September).

A group of tech giants including Google, Facebook and Mozilla have agreed to abide by landmark new standards set out by the European Commission in the battle against the dissemination of fake news across the EU.

The UK intelligence agencies GCHQ, MI5 and MI6 unlawfully captured private data from the UK-based rights charity Privacy International, legal documents published on Tuesday (25 September) reveal, in a move likely to spark fury amongst civil rights campaigners.

UK's Labour party have been taking lessons from Greece's leftist Syriza party, the Greek Minister of State Dimitris Tzanakopoulos has said.

The European Commission sent a stark warning to the UK government on Monday (24 September), after it was revealed that Britain has outstanding customs duty contributions to the EU budget worth €2.7 billion.

The UK's opposition Labour party have said they will adopt a stance on their support for a second Brexit referendum by conducting a vote among members, after a late-night meeting on Sunday evening (23 September).

Facebook came in for heavy criticism on Thursday (20 September), as EU justice chief Věra Jourová shone a light on her own Facebook experience as well as the issue of the tech giant's non-compliance with EU consumer rules.

Europol, the EU's policing agency, released a report on Tuesday (18 September) in which they warned that EU data protection laws may lead to an increase in cyber-extortion.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker made a point of delivering his plenary speech at the Three Seas Initiative forum in Bucharest in French, bucking the trend of other world leaders attending the event on Tuesday (September 18).

US defence secretary Jim Mattis scolded the Kremlin on Monday (17 September) amid concerns that Russia is funding groups to influence the upcoming crucial vote on Macedonia’s name change, which should open the door to NATO and EU membership.

In a departure from his party leader, Labour's London mayor Sadiq Khan has called for another vote on Britain's European Union membership, saying the prime minister's handling of Brexit negotiations had become "mired in confusion and deadlock."

GCHQ, the British government's intelligence and security organisation, has breached human rights in its mass surveillance programme, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said in a landmark ruling on Thursday (13 September).

Security commissioner Julian King assured EU citizens on Thursday (13 September) that plans to tackle the spread of terrorist content online do not amount to "anywhere near censorship."

“Are you surprised that the leading software companies dominating the world today are American platforms?”

These are the words of EIT digital chief Willem Jonker, speaking at the EIT digital conference 2018 in Brussels on Tuesday (11 September).

The European Parliament backed the controversial copyright bill on Wednesday (12 September), drawing cheers of jubilation and howls of disapproval from MEPs in the Strasbourg hemicycle.

The European Commission is set to pursue a crackdown on the spread of online terrorist content and disinformation, its president Jean-Claude Junker announced in his State of the Union address on Wednesday (12 September). 

The European Parliament will vote on its controversial Copyright bill on Wednesday, September 12.

The directive aims to ensure that producers of creative content are remunerated fairly online.

It may be your right to be forgotten, but that doesn't mean you can't be found. That is the big issue on the cards on Tuesday (11 September) as France's data regulator locks horns with Google in a hearing on the global application of the EU's right to be forgotten ruling.

Diplomats from the US and EU meet in Brussels on Monday (10 September) to try and reach a compromise in the trade talks that caused such a stir over the summer.