Citizens' Dialogue in Zagreb with Commissioner Didier Reynders

On 24th January 2020 Commissioner Reynders participated in a Citizens’ Dialogue at the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law, as part of his visit to Zagreb for Informal Justice and Home Affairs Ministerial Meeting.

There were some 60 participants, students of the Faculty and Erasmus exchange students.

The Commissioner gave a lecture about the priorities of the new College of Commissioners and the upcoming actions required for reaching goals set by the Commission. There was a positive atmosphere and the participants, mostly wanted to hear about the Commissioner’s views on the rule of law and the current affairs in some member states in the EU.

Commissioner Reynders started by commenting that there has been a substantial progress made in various fields since the creation of the European Union, putting accent on the installment of the common rules in both economic relationship between member states but also in the rule of law.

He proceeded with information that for the first time Commission will undertake the report of state in the rule of law in every member state and explained that he expects good involvement of member states.

He explained that the Commission is planning to release the white paper on AI, which is the first step in action to invest more in the development of AI to be able to catch up countries like USA, South Korea and China in this department.

He emphasized that Commission also works on the digital transformation of society, but with better consumer rights as well, caring more about protection and safety, which he explained with the example of autonomous cars and liability in case of an accident.

He agreed that consumer protection in the EU needs to be better in some cases, and explained that the recent GDPR evaluation showed that some member states are not on the same level with others regarding the privacy protection.

He emphasized that although EU privacy protection solutions are an example to other countries, which recently passed similar laws in their parliaments, like South Korea, EU needs to invest more in security and protection to be able to play more important role in international relations and influence others to recognize the promotion of common values and accomplishments.

The participants wanted to hear about the Commissioner’s views of situation in Hungary and Poland regarding the rule of law that he mentioned. Other questions from participants were related to topics such as human rights violations on borders, new tools for rule of law and changing values of the EU.