Programme
(PDF: This programme - Agenda )

Day 1 – Wednesday 13 April 2022

08:30-09:00 – Registration and Welcome of Participants

09:00-09:30 – Conference Opening
Speakers:
- Christos Clerides, Professor and Head of Law Department, Frederick University, President of Cyprus Bar Association, Cyprus
- Konstantinos Kouroupis, Assistant Professor, Law Department, Frederick University, Cyprus
- Martin Fertmann, Junior Researcher, Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut,Hamburg, Germany
- Katharine Sarikakis, Professor of Communication Science and Director of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence FREuDe, University of Vienna, Austria
- Meryem Marzouki, Senior Researcher, CNRS and Sorbonne Université, Paris, France

09:30-10:30 – Keynote Session - AI, Human Rights and Democratic Values - A Global Perspective on Policies and Practices
Keynote Speaker: Marc Rotenberg, President, Center for AI and Digital Policy, Washington DC, USA
Chair: Robin Mansell, Professor of New Media and the Internet, London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom

10:30-11:00 – Coffee Break

11:00-12:00 – Stakeholders Roundtable 1 - Migration Control Technologies: Towards an e-Fortress Europe?
Presentation: Whether travelling by regular or irregular means, being refugees, asylum seekers or trying to escape harsh economic conditions, migrants’ entire journey is subject to permanent large-scale surveillance. So-called ‘smart borders’ are emblematic of this quest for unfailing digital control systems, used both for border controls and the daily management of the migrants’ situation. Biometrics, including DNA, robotics, AI and big data, racial profiling, predictive policing, are all used to this end, when not developed and experimented on migrants.
This roundtable presents and discusses main issues related to these developments: What is the state of play in this context? How such an ‘e-Fortress Europe’, as described by some, could be compatible with its own values of human rights, democracy, and the rule of law? Are current safeguards adequate considering such scale and nature of social control? Eventually, which recommendations could be made to better protect migrants’ rights and Europe’s values?
Chair: Meryem Marzouki, Senior Researcher, CNRS and Sorbonne Université, Paris, France
Speakers:
- Jonas Grimheden, Head of the Fundamental Rights Office (Fundamental Rights Officer), European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), Warsaw, Poland
- Petra Molnar, Associate Director, Refugee Law Lab., York University, Toronto, Canada
- Kazimierz Ujazdowski, Member of the Cabinet, European Data Protection Supervisor, Brussels, Belgium
- Niovi Vavoula, Lecturer in Migration and Security, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom

12:00-13:00 – Presentations Session 1 - Structural Inequalities, Social Inclusion and the Principle of Non Discrimination
Chair: Jelena Simić, Associate Professor, Union University, Belgrade, Serbia
- Persons with Disabilities in Cyprus and the lack of accessibility in the virtual world
Ioanna Georgiou, Andreas Christodoulou and K. Stavros Parlalis, Frederick University, Cyprus
- Rethinking Rights in Social Media Governance: Human Rights, Ideology and Inequality
Rachel Griffin, Sciences Po, France
- The right to be excluded from the information society
Georgios Terzis, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and Dariusz Kloza, Universiteit Gent, Belgium

13:00-14:00 – Lunch Break

14:00-14:30 – Special Session - Presentation of the EU-COST Global Digital Human Rights Network
Presentation: The Global Digital Human Rights Network (GDHRNet) is a EU COST Action started in September 2020, to explore the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the online context to the protection of human rights, and to propose a comprehensive system of human rights protection online in the form of policy suggestions for assessment of online content. This special session will detail the objectives, geography and timeline of the project, and present the activities of its 3 working groups: WG1 on Fundamental and vertical dimensions of human rights online; WG2 on Practical dimension of human rights online; and WG3 on Dissemination activities. This session will present GDHRNet research outcomes so far, and provide information on how to get involved with the research network.
Chair: Mart Susi (Action Chair), Professor of Human Rights Law, Tallinn University, Estonia
Speakers:
- Tiina Pajuste (WG1 Leader), Associate Professor of International and European Law, Tallinn University, Estonia
- Gregor Fischer-Lessiak (WG2 Representative), Researcher, University of Graz, Austria
- Giovanni De Gregorio (WG3 Leader), Postdoctoral researcher, University of Oxford, United Kingdom

14:30-16:00 – Presentations Session 2 - Freedom of Expression beyond the EU Digital Services Act: Regulating Private Regulators
Chair: Martin Fertmann, Junior Researcher, Leibniz-Institute for Media Research | Hans-Bredow-Institut, Hamburg, Germany
- European views on the privatization of the public space: addressing human rights restrictions in platforms’ user terms
Berdien van der Donk, Copenhagen University, Denmark
- Regulate the Journey, not the Destination: The Digital Services Act and Freedom of Expression Online
Torben Klausa, Bielefeld University, Germany
- Tracing the contestability of content moderation: Where are the users?
Naomi Appelman, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
- The right to communicate online as an expression of freedom of speech and secrecy of correspondence. A comparative analysis on the example of European Union member states
Stanislaw Edelweiss, Leibniz Universitaet Hannover, Germany
- Order versus Chaos – Democracy and Information Online
Mavili Moura, Coimbra University, Portugal

16:00-16:30 - Coffee Break

16:30-17:30 – Stakeholders Roundtable 2 - Children and Informational Rights in Europe
Presentation: They are at the forefront of technological adoption and continue constituting the largest and fastest growing user-public of global media platforms, this way cementing a future consumer base for digital communication services and products. Yet, youth and in particular children are only recently the focus of policy which aims to prioritise their informational rights as a matter of a larger cartography of digital rights and human rights. The Round Table explores the nexus of communication and control on children’s lives as they are both users-consumers as well as, importantly, emerging and young citizens. What are the challenges to children’s human rights in the digital realm and what are the implications for European democracies?
Chair: Katharine Sarikakis, Professor of Communication Science and Director of Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence FREuDe, University of Vienna, Austria
Speakers:
- Loreto Corredoira, Professor of Communication Law, Complutense University Madrid, Spain
- Stavros Parlalis, Assistant Professor, Frederick University, Cyprus
- Friso Roscam Abbing, Adviser on Communication, EU Fundamental Rights Agency, Vienna, Austria

17:30-18:30 – Presentations Session 3 - Mobilizing Human Rights in the Digital Age
Chair: George Christophides, Executive Director and Partner, Legal Partners, Nicosia, Cyprus
- A digital constitutionalism framework for AI: human rights as socio-technical standards
Nicola Palladino, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
- When unconsent is no option: Assessing the impact of mandatory digital identity systems on human rights
Rosanna Fanni, Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium
- Old Norms in a New Context: The Formulation, Implementation and Enforcement of Human Rights in the Digital Age
Evelyne Tauchnitz, University of Lucerne, Switzerland

19:00-21:00 - Social event

Day 2 – Thursday 14 April 2022

09:00-10:30 – Presentations Session 4 - Normative Models, Normative Powers: Digital Constitutionalism, Digital Sovereignism, Extraterritorialism and Laissez-Faire
Chair: Wolfgang Benedek, Emeritus Professor, University of Graz, Austria
- Between Digital Constitutionalism and Sovereignty: The Emergence of a European Model of Internet Regulation
Mauro Santaniello, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy, Francesco Amoretti, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy and Fortunato Musella, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, Italy
- The normative dimension of the EU cybersecurity securitization
Domenico Fracchiolla, Università degli Studi di Salerno, Italy
- GDPR Codes of Conduct and their Territorial Features: European ‘Data Imperialism’ through Soft Law?
Carl Vander Maelen, Ghent University, Belgium
- “Ethical, Human-Centric AI” going global: European Union leadership and actorness in AI
George Christou, University of Warwick, United Kingdom, Trisha Meyer, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium and Rosanna Fanni, Centre for European Policy Studies, Belgium
- Does the implementation of the GDPR safeguard adequate privacy protection, & general human rights law, for the average EU internet-user? Or, is it just a vague political scheme?
Antonia Frangou, European Law and Governance School - EPLO Institute, Cyprus

10:30-11:00 – Coffee Break

11:00-12:00 – Stakeholders Roundtable 3 - The impact of the pandemic on our digital life
Presentation: It is a common belief that the Covid pandemic brought to an explosion of digitalization at almost all levels of private and public life. E-governance penetrates the relations between EU citizens and administration, digital technology, mainly Artificial Intelligence, have been used in favour of public health, e-commerce knows a great evolution, employers process a large amount of personal information in order to eliminate the spread of the pandemic and protect the productivity of their own business and many EU member states adopt national strategies seeking to implement the EU digital agenda. Under those circumstances, there is a huge data flow and serious concerns arise regarding the protection of privacy and digital rights.
This roundtable pursues to demonstrate the right balance between the digitalization brought by the pandemic and the safeguard of our digital rights. Special questions will be intensively examined, such as the role of national data protection authorities, the use of digital technology in public life and the incorporation of EU digital agenda by national policies.
Chair: Konstantinos Kouroupis, Assistant Professor of European and Data Rights Law, Frederick University, Cyprus
Speakers:
- Oscar Raúl Puccinelli, Professor of Constitutional Law and Human Rights, Argentina
- Irene Loizidou Nikolaidou, Commissioner for Personal Data Protection, Cyprus
- Stefanos Vitoratos, Co-founder and Vice-President, Homo Digitalis, Greece

12:00-13:00 – Presentations Session 5 - Democratic Values and the (Lost?) Promises of Mutistakeholderism, Peer Production and Decentralization
Chair: Dimitrios Devetzis, Visiting Lecturer, Frederick University, Cyprus
- Institutional Sources of Legitimacy in Multistakeholder Global Governance at ICANN
Hortense Jongen, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam & University of Gothenburg, Netherlands and Jan Aart Scholte, Leiden University & University of Duisburg-Essen, Netherlands
- The Limits to Peer Production in Security Infrastructures: Technological and Regulatory Challenges to the PGP Web of Trust
Ashwin Mathew, King's College London, United Kingdom
- Techno-legal Challenges in Digital Identity Infrastructures: the Example of Self Sovereign Identities
Alexandra Giannopoulou, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands and Ioannis Krontiris, Homo Digitalis, Greece

13:00-13:15 – Conference Conclusions