At PLSC Europe 2026, Laurens Naudts, won the ‘Top Policy Provocation’ award for his paper
“Commoning (In)visibilities? On Datafication and Civil Society Representation in the EU’s Digital Acquis”.
(The paper is still a work in progress and will be made public soon.)
Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) Europe 2026 was hosted at Centre for IT & IP Law (CiTiP) at KU Leuven. PLSC Europe is full of fresh, timely ideas, and the conference wants to support these ideas gaining visibility in front of policymakers. Top Policy Provocations are papers that are most likely to make policymakers think, and potentially, make them act.
Abstract:
This contribution critically examines how the EU’s digital policy agenda affords civil society political power. Under current regulatory dynamics, the breadth and scope of civil society’s counterpower are threatened. This diminishing democratic weight stems from two interconnected legislative and political forces. First, as society is increasingly pushed toward datafication and digitalisation, measurable and quantifiable information has become the default political language. Consequently, the visible or legible has been promoted as having greater political force than other forms of knowledge, undermining civil society’s access to alternative forms of political resistance, participation, and communication. Second, digital laws institutionalise, but do not necessarily strengthen, civil society’s presence as a participatory, political partner. To reclaim civil society’s position, this paper explores two countermovements. First, drawing on Édouard Glissant’s poetics of relation (Glissant, 1990/2010), this paper reappraises opacity to counter the myopic perspective of data-centric politics. Second, inspired by Clare Birchall’s radical secrecy and research on the Commons (De Angelis, 2003; Terzis, 2023; Verdegem, 2024), it explores how a political discourse on data and data infrastructures rooted in communal governance and solidarity can strengthen the participatory and communicative dimensions of civil society.
Congratulations Laurens!