Digital Challenges for Consumer Protection and Empowerment

Dr Andreas Schwab has been a Member of the European Parliament for Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) Party since 2004. He is the European People’s Party (EPP) Group Coordinator in the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, a Substitute Member of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs and a member of the Bureau of the EPP Group. He has been rapporteur on the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

Before being elected as an MEP, Schwab was an assistant lawyer at the Ministry for Culture, Youth and Sport in Stuttgart. He was also the Private Secretary to the Minister. Before that, he worked as a consultant for the European Convention in the Department of European Affairs of the Baden-Württemberg State Ministry. He obtained a doctorate in law in 2002 and passed his second state law exam in 2003. He studied law at the University of Freiburg and at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris. He obtained an L.L.M. from the University of Wales in 2000.

Bruno Liebhaberg is Executive Chairman of the think tank Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE) which he founded in 2010.

From 2018 to 2021, he was also the first Chairman of the European Union Observatory on the Online Platform Economy. He is also an Honorary Professor at the Université Libre de Bruxelles’ Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management (SBS-EM ULB) where he taught from 1979 to 2018. Earlier in his career, he advised former European Commission President Jacques Delors on industry and R&D matters related to the completion of the EU Single Market.

He holds a Master’s in management sciences from SBS-EM ULB and a Ph.D. in Industrial Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

¹Also representing B.LIEBHABERG S.A., Director General

²Member of the Strategic Committee

Dries is a lawyer and coordinator of the digital economy at the Consumer Division of the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM). He has nearly 20 years of experience as an enforcement official in numerous economic sectors. He set up ACM’s Behavioural Insigths Team and managed the team for the first years. He has been seconded to the OECD to work on consumer policy. And he is a co-author of ACM’s Guidelines on the Protection of the Online Consumer.

Manuella Péri serves as Deputy-Head of the Unit in charge of consumer law (3A) at the Directorate General for Competition Policy, Consumer Affairs and Fraud Control, the DGCCRF (Ministry of Economy and Finance, Paris). Since joining the DGCCRF in September 2023, she has led the “Europe and international” team, which deals in particular with the negotiation of European legislative proposals in Brussels and the activity of the CPC network. Manuella is also responsible for coordinating the European and international action of the DGCCRF. She previously worked at the French Ministry of the Armed Forces (Direction of Financial Affairs) and the French Ministry of Health (Health Information Systems Management, in the aftermath of the covid-19 pandemic). Manuella is an alumna from the ENA (French National School of public Administration). She graduated from the College of Europe in Natolin/Warsaw (European Interdisciplinary Studies) and from the Sorbonne University (Paris 1, public administration).

Nils Behrndt is currently Deputy Director-General in the Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers at the European Commission. The Directorate-General’s policy areas cover civil and commercial justice, criminal justice, fundamental rights and rule of law, equality and Union citizenship, and consumers. As Deputy Director-General, Nils is in charge of Digital Transformation, civil and criminal justice and consumers protection.

After having worked as researcher and lawyer for some years in Germany, he has joined the European Commission in 2000. He held various positions in Directorate-General Enterprise and Industry, in the cabinets of Vice-President Günter Verheugen (Enterprise and Industry), Commissioner John Dalli and Commissioner Tonio Borg (Health and Consumer Policy) and Commissioner Neven Mimica (Consumer Policy; International cooperation and development).

Nils Behrndt has German and British law degrees and holds a Ph.D. in public administration/law.

Urs Buscke joined BEUC in 2022. Before that, he worked as Attaché at the Permanent Representation of Germany to the EU. Urs Buscke holds a doctorate in EU law from the University of Freiburg, Germany, where he also worked as research assistant at the EU law department after graduation.

Victoria de Posson is currently the Secretary General of the European Tech Alliance (EUTA), a role she took on in September 2022. The EUTA is an organisation that represents leading European-born tech companies. In her role, Victoria works on digital policies, including on digital services, artificial intelligence, and competition. She also manages the day-to-day operations of the alliance.

Before joining EUTA, Victoria held a senior position in public policy at the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and at FTI Consulting. She started her career at Samsung Electronics and the European Parliament. Victoria studied European Affairs at the College of Europe and International Relations at the Catholic University of Louvain-la-Neuve.

In addition to her work in tech policy, she is also involved in promoting gender equality in the digital sector.

Alexandre de Streel is the Academic Director of the digital research programme at the Brussels think-tank Centre on Regulation in Europe (CERRE), professor of European law at the University of Namur and visiting professor at the College of Europe (Bruges) and SciencesPo Paris. He sits in the scientific committees of the Knight-Georgetown Institute (US), the European University Institute-Centre for a Digital Society (Italy) and the Mannheim Centre for Competition and Innovation (Germany).

His main research areas are regulation and competition policy in the digital economy (telecommunications, platforms and data) as well as the legal issues raised by the developments of artificial intelligence. He regularly advises the European Union and international organisations on digital regulation.

Previously, Alexandre held visiting positions at New York University Law School, the European University Institute in Florence, Panthéon-Assas (Singapore campus), Barcelona Graduate School of Economics and the University of Louvain. He also worked for the Belgian Deputy Prime Minister, the Belgian Permanent Representation to the European Union, and the European Commission. He has also been the chair of the expert group on the online platform economy, advising the European Commission.

Amelia Fletcher CBE is a Professor of Competition Policy at the Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia and co-editor of the Journal of Competition Law and Economics. She also acts as an expert witness.

She has been a Non-Executive Director at the UK Competition and Markets Authority (2016-2023), Financial Conduct Authority (2013-20) and Payment Systems Regulator (2014-20), and a member of Ofgem’s Enforcement Decision Panel (2014-2022). She has also been a member of DG Comp’s Economic Advisory Group on Competition Policy, and was a member of the Digital Competition Expert Panel, commissioned by the UK Treasury and led by Jason Furman, which reported in March 2019.

She was previously Chief Economist at the Office of Fair Trading (2001-2013), where she also spent time leading the OFT’s Mergers and Competition Policy teams. Before joining the OFT, she was an economic consultant at Frontier Economics (1999-2001) and London Economics (1993-1999).

She has written and presented widely on competition and consumer policy. In her ongoing research, Amelia has a particular interest in the implications for competition and consumer policy of behavioural economics and online markets.

Amelia has a DPhil and MPhil in economics from Nuffield College, Oxford.

Christoph Busch is Professor of Law and Director of the European Legal Studies Institute at the University of Osnabrück, Germany. He is a Fellow and Council Member of the European Law Institute (ELI) and an Affiliated Fellow at the Information Society Project at Yale University. His research focuses on consumer law, platform governance and algorithmic regulation.