As part of their meetings in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, authors of the draft proposal for an European Charter of Fundamental Digital Rights met with activists and experts on digital rights working for a number of US non-profit advocacy organizations, hosted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Michael Göring, head of the ZEIT Foundation that initiated the project: “The roundtable was an opportunity for an exchange of ideas between our Charter experts and select representatives from American civil society. We were encouraged by statements from participants that there is increasing openness in the technology industry for rules that safeguard human rights. Even if we encountered various recommendations regarding a more impactful format of the Charter, there was unanimity that the chosen approach itself was conducive to strengthening the rights of the individual.”
There was consensus in the discussion that a global approach to the respect of individual rights online and in the digital world must be the ultimate goal. On the way there, strong leadership from Europe is essential, and advocacy groups agreed that strong transatlantic cooperation between US and European organizations is necessary. Participants gave important impulses to the authors of the Digital Charter that will now help navigate future efforts of the ZEIT Foundation with regards to the Charter initiative.
The ZEIT Foundation, based in Germany, together with 27 experts from all areas of civil society in Germany, has drawn up a draft Digital Rights Charter for the European Union. This proposal has been broadly discussed in Germany and the European Parliament since it was first published in late 2016. The results were incorporated in a revised version, which some of the authors now presented to the American public in a series of public events and background meetings (Oct. 26-30, 2019).