Samuel Stolton Archives

The EU has long been plighted by patchy broadband coverage, so much so that previous Commission targets set out for 2020 were put to bed last year by the European Court of Auditors. But could 2019 prove to be a tipping point in the bloc's connectivity potentials?

The controversial EU copyright directive faces a further setback after the final inter-institutional negotiations set to take place on Monday evening (21 January) were cancelled on Friday.

Renewed plans to roll out an EU-wide digital services tax may be back on the cards and could be agreed by the end of March, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said in an interview published on Sunday (20 January).

The European Commission plans to revoke all .eu domain name registrations belonging to British registrars after the UK's withdrawal from the European Union, EURACTIV has learnt.

EU ambassadors convene on Friday morning (18 January) to try and reach a provisional deal on the controversial copyright directive ahead of final "trialogue" talks next Monday (21 January). Meanwhile, lobbyists in Brussels ramp up their opposition against the bill.

The German government is considering excluding Huawei from the country's 5G market amid a global backlash against the Chinese telecoms company. The news comes a week after a senior Huawei executive was arrested on espionage charges in Poland.

The President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, has hinted that the UK should consider staying in the European Union after Prime Minister May's Conservative government experienced a calamitous defeat in the House of Commons on her Brexit deal last night (15 January).

MEPs in the European Parliament's Committee on Industry, Research and Energy backed plans on Monday evening (14 January) for a comprehensive policy framework on artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, weeks after ethical concerns in the field were highlighted in a EU report.

The global e-commerce giant Amazon has been hit with claims that it has destroyed up to three million unsold products from French warehouses over the past year. The news comes a week after Amazon became the world's most valuable public company in terms of market value.

European Commission will seek information from Poland after national authorities arrested this week a Chinese Huawei employee and a Polish national over espionage allegations.

The parent firm of Cambridge Analytica, SCL Elections Ltd, has been hit with a fresh fine of £15,000 (€16,500) including costs, for failing to comply with an enforcement notice delivered by the UK's data protection authority, the Information Commissioner's Office.

Cryptoassets are dangerously unregulated and may give rise to criminal activities, according to two recent assessments published by the European Banking Authority (EBA) and the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

The EU's "right to be forgotten" ruling should only be limited to the EU, the European Court of Justice said on Thursday (10 December), delivering an opinion on a case brought by France's privacy authority, the Commission nationale de l'informatique et des libertés (CNIL).

One of the frontrunners to take up the next EU Commission Presidency, Manfred Weber, responded to concerns over the US Trump administration on Wednesday (9 January), saying that the President "is not America".

2019 is likely to prove the dawn of a 'Techno-ethics' in which consumers will expect their rights to be respected in the digital realm as they are in everyday life and legislators will oblige tech giants to play by the same rules as the wider industry.

What happened in the world of digital policy during 2018? Here's a review of all the big stories, brought to you by Euractiv's Digital Affairs Editor, Samuel Stolton.

The lack of a legal framework to protect children's toys against cybersecurity risks could prove to have damaging consequences, a leading European consumer rights group has warned ahead of the Christmas festivities, advising parents that some of those toys should not even be kept at home.

Tens of thousands of airline passengers in the UK have been left stranded after a suspicious sighting of two drones circling the vicinity of Gatwick airport, prompting security authorities to halt flights late on Wednesday (20 December) evening.

The European Commission's high-level group on Artificial Intelligence (AI) published their highly anticipated report on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics on Tuesday (18 December), drawing attention to issues related to areas such as identification, citizen scoring, and killer robots. 

The European Commission has put pressure on US authorities to nominate a permanent ombudsperson for its data protection agreement with the US, with Justice Commissioner Věra Jourová saying that her "patience is coming to an end" on the issue.

The Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, has issued a stark warning to the Dutch public, telling them to learn from the mistakes of the British government while the Brexit negotiations continue to be dogged by setbacks in the UK for Prime Minister Theresa May.

France is to join a growing list of member states setting out their own plans for a digital tax, after the country's Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire announced on Monday (17 December) that new French laws for the taxation of digital giants would come into effect from 1 January 2019.

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker condemned Hungary's leader Viktor Orbán on Friday (14 December), accusing him of spreading fake news in relation to the UK's decision to withdraw from the EU. The comments came as EU leaders banded together to combat the spread of disinformation in the run up to the 2019 European elections.

MEPs in the European Parliament have signalled their support in clear and uncertain terms for the taxation of digital services, during a vote in Thursday's plenary session (13 December) in Strasbourg.