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techUK

techUK

techUK is the trade association which brings together people, companies and organisations to realise the positive outcomes of what digital technology can achieve.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Mārtiņš Staķis (Member of the European Parliament)

13 Oct 2025 · EU-UK Defence Cooperation

Response to European Data Union Strategy

18 Jul 2025

More detailed feedback can be found in the attached document. Data are playing an ever-increasing role as a key resource capable of enhancing value creation and fostering new industries, processes and products. The free flow of data is not just a business imperative, it is also a societal necessity. In an increasingly interconnected world, data-driven innovations have the potential to address some of the most pressing economic, societal, and environmental challenges. From enhancing public service delivery to improving evidence-based policymaking, the benefits of data access and sharing are far-reaching. The rise of Artificial Intelligence (in particular generative AI) has only further enhanced the importance of data access and sharing. It is for this reason that techUK supports the development of data strategies that facilitate responsible data sharing and support data protection standards which build a consistent global framework to foster responsible innovation. It is only through the development of a framework enabling the free flow of data with trust that policies like the EUs AI act can hope to achieve their potential. More detailed feedback can be found in the attached document.
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Meeting with Xavier Coget (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen)

26 Mar 2025 · The meeting provided opportunity to discuss the priorities of EVP Virkkunen on the internal and external dimensions of EU digital policy and to hear from ‘techUK’ on tech and regulatory developments in the UK

Meeting with Agata Gerba (Head of Unit Trade)

25 Mar 2025 · EU-UK cooperation in the fields of technology and trade

Meeting with Alejandro Cainzos (Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová), Daniel Braun (Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová)

8 Nov 2023 · UK policy developments and AI governance

Meeting with Dragoş Tudorache (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur)

24 Jan 2023 · Artificial Intelligence

Meeting with Daniel Braun (Cabinet of Vice-President Věra Jourová)

11 May 2022 · Digital Services Act (EU), the Online Safety Bill (UK), the respective codes of practise

Meeting with Michele Piergiovanni (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager), Penelope Papandropoulos (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Margrethe Vestager)

20 Apr 2022 · competition policy coordination.

Response to Commission Implementing Decision on standard contractual clauses for the transfer of personal data to third countries

10 Dec 2020

techUK would like to thank the European Commission for the opportunity to provide feedback on the draft implementing act for new standard contractual clauses (SCCs) for transferring personal data to non-EU countries. Broadly the new SCCs have been welcomed by techUK members as an important technical improvement over the old SCCs while seeking to incorporate the decision of the ECJ’s ruling on 16 July 2020, commonly referred to as Schrems II. techUK members have welcomed a number of positive aspects while also suggesting areas for improvement to ensure that the new SCCs meet the Commission’s aims to make these SCCs more suited to modern transfer scenarios as well as incorporating the requirements set out in the ECJ’s ruling in the Schrems II case. Further details are included in the attached document.
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Response to Energy labelling for electronic displays

7 Nov 2018

techUK is supportive of position of DIGITALEUROPE. techUK is the UK trade association for companies operating in the digital economy. We remain very supportive of the Ecodesign and Energy Labelling frameworks. Our members aim to ensure that their products are designed, produced, used, and recycled in a sustainable and safe manner whilst providing increased benefits to our customers and society at large. We very much appreciate the opportunity to provide feedback on the proposed display regulations via the better regulation portal. The revision process for the regulations for displays has been ongoing since 2012 and has at times lacked transparency, thorough analysis and proper impact assessment. Moreover, data provided by industry has has not been given due consideration in the setting of the on-mode power consumption requirements. We understand the Commission’s political ambition to integrate strict energy and resource efficiency aspects in ecodesign but we are concerned that some of the requirements put forward are (1) unmanageable (unrealistic energy efficiency limits), (2) lack proper impact assessment (e.g. inclusion of signage displays into the scope), or (3) provide no added value for end of life actors (extensive repair and end-of-life information requirements). (1) Such severe energy efficiency requirements will seriously limit the capacity of state-of-the-art technologies to remain on the European market. Instead of removing the least efficient models, the proposed requirements will disproportionately deny market access to new display technologies and high resolution televisions and monitors, and as a result, EU consumers will not be able to benefit from the most recent breakthroughs in picture quality improvement. It therefore becomes critical that the requirements are made more feasible by introducing a series of correction factors in the EEI formula. (2) We question the Commission’s decision to include signage displays in the scope of the Energy Labelling proposal, especially given that no prior analysis of the complexities of these products has been conducted. (3) We are extremely concerned regarding the draft provisions requiring the disclosure of repair and end-of-life information as soon as a product is placed on the market. It is crucial to note that repair and dismantling information are usually proprietary and constitute manufacturers’ intellectual property. Disclosing such information will directly undermine manufacturer’s competitiveness and increase the risk of reverse-engineering, an impact that can be avoided if the requirements become mandatory 2 years after the product is first placed on the market. Further, the declaration of hazardous substance and critical raw material content in milligrams is not practical because manufacturers do not receive such precise information from their component suppliers, and the information does not provide any added value for recyclers. We are providing as an attachment DIGITALEUROPE's detailed position on the proposed display regulations containing our analysis and requests. We hope that, with your support, the concerns of the display industry would be considered during the development of the final drafts of these regulations.
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Response to Energy labelling requirements for computers and computer servers

9 Mar 2018

Estimated savings, complexity & duty cycle Industry would caution on the increase of the estimated energy saving potential. Projecting PC usage and energy consumption growth to 2030 is meaningless; projections involving digital technology further than five years ahead provides no degree of accuracy or certainty. When considering the EU’s own estimated sales figures from PRODCOM it shows a levelling/downward trend in sales numbers for Notebooks (NB) and Desktop (DT) computers, this is certainly a true reflection of the market over the past few years, we continue to see a declining market in the EU. The last stakeholder meeting provided some rough estimates of active usage patterns from one Energy*compliant Notebook. The conclusions suggest that “estimates around how long computers are used for vary considerably across different studies even for the same type of computer (e.g. desktop computer)”. No actual data has been collected to quantify and therefore provide a creditable estimate of the duty cycle of either NBs or DTs assuming a number of usage patterns. A comprehensive duty cycle and power study to assess the significance of active power is necessary and if active power is deemed significant, selection of the right workloads will become another challenge to properly measure active mode power of computers. Without such a study, proposing an energy label based on active power metric is premature. Industry would be interested in providing support to such a study that the EC initiates to assess the usage patterns and characterize a typical duty cycle from various power modes including active, idle (short & long), sleep and off. Consideration on the Energy Label We like to remind that introducing an Energy Label for computers would be a complex exercise, high configurability of computer products and based on active performance requires specific analysis together with other information requirements detailed on the Energy Label. The existing Energy* label remains a well established and effective scheme for product differentiation. The E* programme serves as a significant global standard for the ICT sector, providing a stable regulatory framework and harmonization of methodologies. Furthermore the E* criteria have proven to be one of the main criteria supporting European Green Public Procurement. Regardless the termination of the EU-US Agreement, the ICT Industry remains committed to the E* criteria development and supports its continued basis for the Computer Ecodesign regulation review. Scope Industry cannot support a proposal to move tablets from the regulation. There are now a number “hybrid devices” in the market which combine notebooks and tablets together. Further innovative designs are to be expected as customer acceptance increases. Legal uncertainty for such devices is a risk if they were to be regulated by two different regulations with potentially different requirements. Material efficiency The IT industry had submitted comments to the draft report "Analysis of material efficiency aspects of personal computers product group" in February 2017. While a few of these comments have been integrated into the final report, many of the proposed measures to improve the material efficiency of computers still lack practicability and present significant documentation and manufacturing effort with no added value. Namely, the industry is concerned that labelling requirements for product parts (e.g. plastics, batteries) and information requirements on materials (e.g. CRM) will not be effective to improve material recovery rates as state of the art WEEE sorting and recycling processes do not make use of the information. Industry is also convinced consumers do not seek information on technical performance details such as the IP class of a device, or the battery management features. Any material efficiency measures should be practicable, consistent and result in quantifiable environmental benefits.
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Response to Review of ecodesign requirements for computers and computer servers

9 Mar 2018

Estimated savings, complexity & duty cycle Industry would caution on the increase of the estimated energy saving potential. Projecting PC usage and energy consumption growth to 2030 is meaningless; projections involving digital technology further than five years ahead provides no degree of accuracy or certainty. When considering the EU’s own estimated sales figures from PRODCOM it shows a leveling/downward trend in sales numbers for Notebooks (NB) and Desktop (DT) computers, this is certainly a true reflection of the market over the past few years, we continue to see a declining market in the EU. The last stakeholder meeting provided some rough estimates of active usage patterns from one Energy* compliant Notebook. The conclusions suggest that “estimates around how long computers are used for vary considerably across different studies even for the same type of computer (e.g. desktop computer)”. No actual data has been collected to quantify and therefore provide a creditable estimate of the duty cycle of either NBs or DTs assuming a number of usage patterns. A comprehensive duty cycle and power study to assess the significance of active power is necessary and if active power is deemed significant, selection of the right workloads will become another challenge to properly measure active mode power of computers. Without such a study, proposing an energy label based on active power metric is premature. Industry would be interested in providing support to such a study that the EC initiates to assess the usage patterns and characterize a typical duty cycle from various power modes including active, idle (short & long), sleep and off. Consideration on the Energy Label We would like to remind that introducing an Energy Label for computers would be a complex exercise, high configurability of computer products and based on active performance requires specific analysis together with other information requirements detailed on the Energy Label. The existing Energy* label remains a well established and effective scheme for product differentiation. The E* programme serves as a significant global standard for the ICT sector, providing a stable regulatory framework and harmonization of methodologies. Furthermore the E* criteria have proven to be one of the main criteria supporting European Green Public Procurement. Regardless the termination of the EU-US Agreement, the ICT Industry remains committed to the E* criteria development and supports its continued basis for the Computer Ecodesign regulation review. Scope Industry cannot support a proposal to move tablets from the regulation. There are now a number “hybrid devices” in the market which combine notebooks and tablets together. Further innovative designs are to be expected as customer acceptance increases. Legal uncertainty for such devices is a risk if they were to be regulated by two different regulations with potentially different requirements. Material efficiency The IT industry had submitted comments to the draft report "Analysis of material efficiency aspects of personal computers product group" in February 2017. While a few of these comments have been integrated into the final report, many of the proposed measures to improve the material efficiency of computers still lack practicability and present significant documentation and manufacturing effort with no added value. Namely, the industry is concerned that labelling requirements for product parts (e.g. plastics, batteries) and information requirements on materials (e.g. CRM) will not be effective to improve material recovery rates as state of the art WEEE sorting and recycling processes do not make use of the information. Industry is also convinced consumers do not seek information on technical performance details such as the IP class of a device, or the battery management features. Any material efficiency measures should be practicable, consistent and result in quantifiable environmental benefits.
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Meeting with Kevin O'Connell (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová)

7 Sept 2016 · GDPR and EU-US Privacy Shield

Meeting with Michael Hager (Digital Economy) and The Coalition for a Digital Economy

20 Apr 2016 · platforms

Meeting with Kevin O'Connell (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová), Renate Nikolay (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová), Simona Constantin (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová)

19 Apr 2016 · Digital Contracts, DP

Meeting with Stig Joergen Gren (Cabinet of Vice-President Andrus Ansip)

26 Jan 2016 · DSM, platforms

Meeting with Kevin O'Connell (Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová)

25 Jun 2015 · Data protecion

Meeting with Ann Mettler (Director-General Inspire, Debate, Engage and Accelerate Action)

24 Mar 2015 · Meeting with British tech start-up