HOMO DIGITALIS ΑΣΤΙΚΗ ΜΗ ΚΕΡΔΟΣΚΟΠΙΚΗ ΕΤΑΙΡΕΙΑ
Homo Digitalis
Η Ηomo Digitalis είναι η πρώτη ελληνική Αστική μη Κερδοσκοπική Εταιρεία με σκοπό την υπεράσπιση και προώθηση των Δικαιωμάτων του Ανθρώπου στην ψηφιακή εποχή με έτος ίδρυσης το 2018.
ID: 611935634267-89
Lobbying Activity
Response to Digital package – digital omnibus
14 Oct 2025
Η Homo Digitalis, ως ενεργό μέλος του ευρωπαϊκού δικτύου EDRi, επιθυμεί με την παρούσα σύντομη τοποθέτηση να συμπληρώσει και να υποστηρίξει πλήρως τη θέση του δικτύου μας. Η πρόταση της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής για το επικείμενο Ψηφιακό Γενικό Πρόγραμμα (Digital Omnibus) εντάσσεται σε ένα ευρύτερο πλέγμα απορρυθμιστικών πρωτοβουλιών, οι οποίες παρουσιάζονται υπό το πρόσχημα της «απλοποίησης». Ωστόσο, αυτή η προσέγγιση φαίνεται να επιχειρεί τη σταδιακή αποδόμηση θεμελιωδών προστασιών, παρουσιάζοντας τα δικαιώματα ως διοικητικά εμπόδια ή «γραφειοκρατία». Η πρακτική αυτή ενέχει σοβαρό κίνδυνο να αποδυναμώσει κρίσιμες ρυθμίσεις που κατοχυρώθηκαν μέσα από πολυετείς θεσμικές και κοινωνικές διεργασίες, και οι οποίες αποτελούν τη ραχοκοκαλιά του ευρωπαϊκού νομικού πλαισίου για τα ψηφιακά δικαιώματα. Η ορθή εφαρμογή της ενωσιακής νομοθεσίας απαιτεί χρόνο, συνέπεια και διαρθρωτικά μέτρα ενίσχυσης των εποπτικών μηχανισμών. Αντί, όμως, η Επιτροπή να εστιάζει στη βελτίωση της εφαρμογής και της συμμόρφωσης, η πρόσκληση για υποβολή στοιχείων υποδηλώνει πρόθεση αναθεώρησης ή ακόμη και κατάργησης ουσιωδών προστασιών που προβλέπονται σε σειρά ψηφιακών νομοθετημάτων, ακόμη και για διατάξεις που δεν έχουν τεθεί ακόμη σε ισχύ (όπως το μέρος πέμπτο "eID" για το προτεινόμενο Business Wallet, το οποίο δεν έχει καν υλοποιηθεί). Αυτές οι κινήσεις εντάσσονται σε μια ευρύτερη τάση «ψηφιακής απλοποίησης», η οποία, μεταξύ άλλων, απειλεί το ευρωπαϊκό πλαίσιο προστασίας δεδομένων προσωπικού χαρακτήρα (ιδίως όσον αφορά τις μικρομεσαίες επιχειρήσεις) και την ουδετερότητα του διαδικτύου. Παρόμοια αποδυνάμωση θεμελιωδών εγγυήσεων έχει ήδη παρατηρηθεί με την απογοητευτική απόσυρση του Κανονισμού ePrivacy και της Οδηγίας για την Ευθύνη Συστημάτων Τεχνητής Νοημοσύνης (AI Liability Directive). Αν και το πρώτο μέρος του Digital Omnibus δηλώνει στόχο τη ρύθμιση της ροής μη προσωπικών δεδομένων, τα προτεινόμενα μέτρα «απλοποίησης» ενδέχεται στην πράξη να υπονομεύσουν την εφαρμογή του GDPR, ενώ οι προβλέψεις για υποχρεωτική αναφορά θεμάτων κυβερνοασφάλειας (μέρος τρίτο) εγείρουν σοβαρά ζητήματα σχετικά με την προστασία της ιδιωτικότητας. Επιπλέον, το δεύτερο μέρος, που αφορά τα cookie banners (άρθρο 5(3) της Οδηγίας ePrivacy), φαίνεται να υποτιμά τη σημασία μιας θεμελιώδους διάταξης του δικαίου της ΕΕ. Η εν λόγω διάταξη δεν αφορά απλώς την ενόχληση των χρηστών, αλλά αποτελεί ακρογωνιαίο λίθο για την προστασία από αυθαίρετη ή δυσανάλογη κρατική ή εμπορική παρακολούθηση, διασφαλίζοντας τον πυρήνα του δικαιώματος στην ιδιωτικότητα, όπως αυτό κατοχυρώνεται στον Χάρτη Θεμελιωδών Δικαιωμάτων της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης. Η αντιμετώπισή της ως «τεχνικό ζήτημα» συνιστά υποβάθμιση του νομικού της βάρους. Το τέταρτο μέρος του Digital Omnibus, που αναφέρεται σε τροποποιήσεις του Κανονισμού για την Τεχνητή Νοημοσύνη (AI Act), εγείρει επίσης ανησυχίες, καθώς η εφαρμογή του βρίσκεται ακόμη σε πρώιμο στάδιο. Παρότι η υφιστάμενη διατύπωση του AI Act δεν παρέχει απόλυτη προστασία των θεμελιωδών δικαιωμάτων, καθιερώνει ένα απαραίτητο ρυθμιστικό πλαίσιο που προωθεί τη διαφάνεια, τη λογοδοσία και την αποτροπή διακρίσεων στα συστήματα τεχνητής νοημοσύνης. Η καθυστέρηση ή αποδυνάμωση των διατάξεων του Κανονισμού θα δημιουργούσε νομική αβεβαιότητα και θα αποθάρρυνε τους παρόχους που επιδιώκουν συμμόρφωση. Παράλληλα, οι ευρύτερες στρατηγικές της Επιτροπής στον τομέα της ΤΝ, όπως τα προγράμματα Apply AI και AI Continent, εστιάζουν σε ταχεία και εκτεταμένη ανάπτυξη υποδομών ΤΝ (data centers, training data κ.λπ.). Υφίσταται ο κίνδυνος αυτή η επιτάχυνση να συνοδευτεί από χαλάρωση των κανόνων προστασίας δεδομένων, βιωσιμότητας και εταιρικής λογοδοσίας, επαναλαμβάνοντας τάσεις που έχουν παρατηρηθεί και σε άλλες πρωτοβουλίες Digital Omnibus. Τέλος, επισημαίνουμε σοβαρά διαδικαστικά ζητήματα σχετικά με την παρούσα διαδικασία διαβούλευσης. Με 6 εβδομάδες να απομένουν έως την παρουσίαση της πρότασης, ο διαθέσιμος χρόνος δεν επαρκεί για την ουσιαστική συμμετοχή των οργανώσεων της κοινωνίας των πολιτών.
Read full responseResponse to Burden reduction and simplification for competitiveness of small mid-cap enterprises - Omnibus Regulation
18 Aug 2025
Homo Digitalis appreciates the Commissions resolve to help smaller organisations navigate EU law. Nevertheless, we have serious reservations: the proposed change to Article 30(5) GDPR would stray from the Regulations core aims and could erode the coherence of the EUs data-protection regime. The GDPR is a rights-centric framework intended to guarantee every person in the Union a consistently high level of protection, irrespective of who controls or processes their data. The draft revision would markedly narrow accountability by scrapping the existing cumulative safeguards for the exemption and replacing them with a nebulous, self-assessed high-risk trigger. Most critically, removing the requirement that processing be occasional would permit continuous and systematic operations to proceed without documentation. Such a shift would blunt transparency, hinder enforcement, and make it harder for individuals to understand and exercise their rights. It would also create significant legal ambiguity for controllers and supervisory authorities, fostering fragmentation and uncertainty incompatible with the Regulations objectives. Equally troubling is the legislative route. Altering a cornerstone of the GDPR through a horizontal simplification file without a targeted legal analysis, impact assessment, or public consultation on fundamental-rights implications sets a harmful precedent. It invites further dilution of protections via procedural shortcuts rather than open, democratic deliberation. Homo Digitalis therefore calls on the Commission to withdraw the proposed amendment to Article 30(5) GDPR. We also urge co-legislators not to reopen or modify the GDPR through omnibus instruments or broader deregulatory agendas. The priority should be rigorous application and enforcement of the existing framework, not rolling back protections essential to safeguarding fundamental rights in the digital age. We remain ready to engage constructively and to support initiatives that improve clarity and enforcement, on the condition that they reinforce, rather than weaken, the rights and safeguards the GDPR is designed to secure.
Read full responseResponse to European Data Union Strategy
18 Jul 2025
Homo Digitalis welcomes the European Commissions efforts to consult stakeholders on the Data Union Strategy. While supporting better data governance and innovation for the public good, the organisation expresses serious concerns that the Strategy could lead to weakened data protection under the guise of simplification, flexibility, and competitiveness. Central to the submission is the argument that fundamental rights should be preserved and strengthened, not treated as obstacles. The current framing of GDPR and the ePrivacy framework as barriers is misleading. Challenges in implementation stem from enforcement gaps and under-resourced authorities rather than from the legal protections themselves. Any efforts to simplify data governance must not erode key principles such as purpose limitation, lawfulness, data minimisation, and accountability. The withdrawn ePrivacy Regulation should not be taken as a signal to dilute privacy rights. Its core protections remain essential. Homo Digitalis warns against creating new legislative tools that bypass or undercut the GDPR. Instead, existing laws must be consistently applied and strongly enforced. The GDPR and ePrivacy should not be subject to streamlining or harmonisation efforts that weaken their distinct legal role in upholding the Charter of Fundamental Rights. Regarding data access, the organisation supports making quality data more accessible for public interest uses but insists that this must be done with clear safeguards. Industrial and non-personal data are not inherently harmless, particularly in platform and IoT contexts where data may be re-identified or used in profiling. Even synthetic or pseudonymised datasets can replicate discrimination, especially in AI systems. Expanded access must be based on clearly defined purposes, enforceable protections, and thorough impact assessments. Publicly funded projects like European data spaces and AI infrastructures must uphold the highest standards of transparency, fairness, and environmental responsibility. AI should not be pursued for its own sake, especially given its climate impact and resource intensity. Data reuse should never compromise traceability or accountability. Interoperability must not become a tool for unchecked data extraction. The submission supports the European Parliaments 2021 Resolution on the Data Strategy, particularly its focus on fundamental rights, decentralised data governance, and community-driven digital commons. The Strategy must do more to limit the dominance of major market actors and prevent data monopolies. Homo Digitalis stresses that the GDPR is a foundation, not a hurdle. The Data Act does not independently legalise personal data processing, and compliance with GDPR and ePrivacy remains essential. Vague references to flexibility in the Strategy raise concerns about attempts to reinterpret or weaken core data protection principles. Perceived complexity in GDPR enforcement is mainly due to underfunding, inconsistent oversight, and lack of coordination, not legal flaws. International data transfers are also addressed. While global flows are important, Homo Digitalis insists that data protection should never be compromised for trade. Tools like adequacy decisions and standard clauses are safeguards, not trade barriers. Decisions should be based on legal substance, not geopolitical agendas. Trade agreements must not limit the EUs ability to regulate AI, source code transparency, or data localisation in the public interest. On governance, Homo Digitalis calls for stronger coordination without weakening the independence of data protection authorities or reducing democratic oversight. Streamlining must not centralise power at the expense of rights-based enforcement. Public participation and civil society input must remain integral to data policy-making. Finally, the ICT sector already consumes significant energy and contributes to emissions and waste.
Read full responseResponse to Report on the application of the General Data Protection Regulation
6 Feb 2024
Homo Digitalis genuinely believes that the first five years of GDPR enforcement can be characterised as successful. The GDPR has undeniably served as a cornerstone in establishing strong guidelines for member states, setting a comprehensive framework for elevated data protection standards. Over the course of its five-year tenure, GDPR has played a pivotal role not only in safeguarding individuals' privacy but also in cultivating a heightened awareness among citizens regarding their data protection rights. Homo Digitalis has addressed most questions posed by the European Commission in its questionnaire. We hereby attach our input to the questionnaire, aspiring for it to be constructive.
Read full responseMeeting with Nikos Papandreou (Member of the European Parliament)
10 Oct 2023 · Meeting
Meeting with Birgit Sippel (Member of the European Parliament) and Access Now Europe and
8 Nov 2022 · Biometric surveillance
Meeting with Gwendoline Delbos-Corfield (Member of the European Parliament)
20 Sept 2022 · Biometric Mass Surveillance
Meeting with Erik Marquardt (Member of the European Parliament)
20 Sept 2022 · Biometric Mass Surveillance and AI
Response to Requirements for Artificial Intelligence
5 Aug 2021
Παρακαλούμε όπως βρείτε συνημμένη την τοποθέτηση της Homo Digitalis στην ανοιχτή διαβούλευση της Ευρωπαϊκής Επιτροπής για τις διατάξεις του προτεινόμενου κανονισμού για την Τεχνητή Νοημοσύνη.
Με εκτίμηση,
Η συντακτική ομάδα της Homo Digitalis
Read full responseResponse to Declaration of Digital Principles
16 Jun 2021
Ηοmo Digitalis welcomes the opportunity to provide feedback on the document "Declaration of Digital Principles – the ‘European way’ for the digital society" and we appreciate this opportunity to share our views on the matter.
To begin with, we would like to support the submissions of the organisations European Digitalis Rights (EDRi), Access Now, FSFE, Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU and Communia. Moreover, we would like to acknowledge that prominent civil society organizations have been active in shaping national agendas on related matters, such as Xnet in Spain and D3-Defesa dos Direitos Digitais in Portugal. Thus, we suggest to the European Commission to examine in depth related initiatives at national level in various Member States in an attempt to follow a uniform approach towards this topic.
We would like to express a strong preference of legal obligations for digital policies over ethical “principles”. We understand that ethics serve as a good starting point for a debate . More precisely, the absence of consensual understandings and an agreed vocabulary to address this topic, provides space for normative and value-laden beliefs to become encoded within ethical standards. Moreover, a discussion rooted in ethical principles allows for greater engagement from a variety of stakeholders in early discussions. Empirically, each of us has her/his own norms and moral standards. So, citizens and different stakeholders feel entitled to participate in the discussion and contribute their ideas.
However, there exist clear legal obligations arising form the EU Charter, the EU Treaties and the EU statutory law which is very comprehensive in the digital rights field (GDPR, LED, CDSM, regulatory reform initiatives in eRrivacy, DSA/DMA, Data Governance Act and more). Thus, when preparing a Declaration of Digital Principles – the ‘European way’ for the digital society, we encourage you to base any such Declaration on the related legal provisions and to complement the Declaration with aspects that were not specifically foreseen when the legal texts were drafted but that can be interpreted from them and the case-law of the Court of Justice of the European Union.
Lastly, we would like to see more engagement in this topic. Thus, in addition to this public consultation we would expect more tentative exchanges of ideas to take place in the near future.
Read full responseMeeting with Thierry Breton (Commissioner) and
9 Dec 2020 · Roundtable with NGOs on DSA and DMA
Response to New competition tool
30 Jun 2020
Athens, 30.06.2020
Feedback regarding the new complementary tool to strengthen competition enforcement
Homo Digitalis is a Greek civil society organisation based in Athens that focuses on the promotion and protection of human rights in the digital age. We are also members of the European Digital Rights (EDRi) network. We welcome this initiative and we would like to thank the European Commission for offering us the opportunity to provide our feedback for the new complementary tool to strengthen competition enforcement. We agree with the European Commission that this initiative comes in the right time and that if developed properly, it will addresses gaps in the current EU rules identified on the basis of the Commission’s experience with enforcing the EU competition rules in digital and other markets. There is indeed the need for changes to the current competition rules that will allow for enforcement action, preserving at the same time, the competitiveness of markets.
We would like to bring to your attention that Homo Digitalis participates and endorses the common submission of COMMUNIA Association on the ex-ante regulatory instrument of very large online platforms acting as gatekeepers. This submission expresses the opinions and voices of more than 20 organisations, i.e. Access Now, ARTICLE 19, Centrum Cyfrowe, Civil Liberties Union for Europe, Civil Rights Defenders, Creative Commons, dataskydd.net, Electronic Frontier Foundation, European Digital Rights (EDRi), Global Forum for Media Development, Homo Digitalis, Idec - Brazilian Institute of Consumer Defense, Open Knowledge Foundation, OSEPI, Panoptykon Foundation, Privacy International, Ranking Digital Rights, Rights International Spain and Xnet.
The European Commission should include in the session dedicated to the 'Likely impacts on fundamental rights' not only data protection and privacy, but also other fundamental rights which are impacted by the business models built on exploiting people’s data, such as freedom of expression, right to non-discrimination, or freedom of assembly and association. We hope that the Commission will give due attention to our calls and will not miss the opportunity to set the rules for a democratic, fair, innovative and fundamental rights oriented digital society in Europe.
We remain at your disposal for any clarification. Many thanks for your time on our input.
Read full response30 Jun 2020
Athens, 30.06.2020
Feedback regarding the ex-ante regulatory instrument of very large online platforms acting as gatekeepers
Homo Digitalis is a Greek civil society organisation based in Athens that focuses on the promotion and protection of human rights in the digital age. We are also members of the European Digital Rights (EDRi) network. We welcome this initiative and we would like to thank the European Commission for offering us the opportunity to provide our feedback for regulating large online platforms acting as gatekeepers. We shall ensure that markets impacted by such large online platforms remain fair and competitive, since their role as gatekeepers between businesses and consumers makes it all but impossible for rivals or new market entrants to compete.
We would like to bring to your attention that Homo Digitalis participates and endorses the common submission of COMMUNIA Association on the ex-ante regulatory instrument of very large online platforms acting as gatekeepers. This submission expresses the opinions and voices of more than 20 organisations, i.e. Access Now, ARTICLE 19, Centrum Cyfrowe, Civil Liberties Union for Europe, Civil Rights Defenders, Creative Commons, dataskydd.net, Electronic Frontier Foundation, European Digital Rights (EDRi), Global Forum for Media Development, Homo Digitalis, Idec - Brazilian Institute of Consumer Defense, Open Knowledge Foundation, OSEPI, Panoptykon Foundation, Privacy International, Ranking Digital Rights, Rights International Spain and Xnet.
This initiative of the European Commission constitute a once in a generation opportunity. The planned reform could become a blueprint for the regulation of digital markets and services worldwide. Therefore, we hope the Commission will give due attention to our calls and will not miss the opportunity to set the rules for a democratic, fair, innovative and fundamental rights oriented digital society in Europe.
We remain at your disposal for any clarification. Many thanks for your time on our input.
The team of Homo Digitalis
Read full response