Programme and Speakers | High-Level Debate: “From Omnibus to Opportunity: Driving Data Protection and Innovation”

Ulrich Baumgartner, Regional Leader, DACH, IAPP; Partner, Baumgartner Baumann (moderator)

Leonardo Cervera Navas, EDPS Secretary-General

Leonardo Cervera Navas is the Secretary-General of the European Data Protection Supervisor. 

He started his career in the European Commission in 1999 and since then he has been working in the data protection field in the EU institutions. In 2010, he joined the EDPS as a manager and he was appointed Director in 2018.

Victoria de Posson, Secretary General, European Tech Alliance
 

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, data protection, 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.

Andreas Hartl, Deputy Federal Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information (BfDI)

Joachim Herrmann, Bavarian State Minister of the Interior, for Sport and Integration

Joachim Herrmann, born in Munich on 21 September 1956, is the Bavarian State Minister of the Interior, for Sport and Integration. He is married, a Roman Catholic, and the father of three children.

He studied law at Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen and Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, completing both state examinations after practical training in the courts and public administration. He also completed basic military service and later became a reserve lieutenant colonel.

His career began in the Bavarian State Chancellery and then continued as head of public order and safety in the Erlangen-Höchstadt District Office, followed by a legal role at Siemens AG.

In politics, he has been active in the CSU and its youth wing since the 1970s, served on Erlangen City Council, entered the Bavarian Parliament in 1994, and has held senior state government posts since 1998. He has been Bavarian State Minister of the Interior since 2007 and has held his current portfolio since 2018.

Marina Kaljurand, MEP, 
Rapporteur of the Digital Omnibus Regulation
 

Kaljurand serves as the 1st Vice-Chair of the LIBE (Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs) committee in the European Parliament. In LIBE committee she has focused on digital policy, and there she has been appointed Rapporteur of the Digital Omnibus Regulation. This is Kaljurand's second mandate in the Parliament. She is the Chair of the Steering Committee of the European Internet Forum (EIF), from October 2024.

Kaljurand was a member of the UN Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters (2020 – 2023). 

Kaljurand was a member of the UN Secretary General’s High Level Panel on Digital Cooperation (2018-2019). She chaired the Global Commission of the Stability of Cyberspace (2017-2019).  

Kaljurand started in the Estonian Foreign Service in 1991 and held several prominent positions, including Estonian Ambassador to the State of Israel, the Russian Federation, United States of America, Canada, Mexico and Kazakhstan.  

Kaljurand has served twice as the Estonian National Expert at the United Nations Group of Governmental Experts on Developments in the Field of Information and Telecommunications in the Context of International Security (GGE), in 2014-2015 and in 2016-2017. 

Marina Kaljurand graduated cum laude from the Tartu University (1986, LLM). She has a professional diploma from the Estonian School of Diplomacy (1992) and MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University (F95).

Michael McNamara, Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur on the AI Omnibus

Michael McNamara was elected to the European Parliament to represent the Ireland South constituency in June 2024.

Michael is Co-Chair of the European Parliament’s Working Group on the Implementation and Enforcement of the AI Act. He serves as a member of the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs (LIBE) and is Co-Rapporteur for the Digital Omnibus on AI. Michael is also a substitute member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) and Shadow Rapporteur for the Digital Omnibus. 

He is also Vice-Chair of the European Parliament’s Delegation for relations with the countries of South Asia (DSAS), and substitute member of the EU-UK Parliamentary Partnership Assembly.

Before his election to the European Parliament, Michael represented the Clare constituency as a member of the Irish parliament from 2011 until 2016, and again from 2020 until 2024. 

As a national politician, he was appointed Chair of the Special Committee on the COVID-19 Response in 2020 and Chair of the Oireachtas Committee on Drug Use in 2024.

Michael is a barrister and a farmer.

Renate Nikolay, Deputy Director-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology of the European Commission
 

Renate Nikolay is Deputy Director-General in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Communication Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT). In that role, she oversees the enforcement of the digital rulebook for platforms (Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act), the policies on digital connectivity, data, media and audiovisual as well as international and interinstitutional relations. 

Between 2014 and 2022, she was Head of Cabinet of Vĕra Jourová in her roles as Commissioner for Justice and Consumers and as Vice-President for Values and Transparency. 

Prior to that Renate Nikolay was Head of Unit in DG JUST and served as member in the Cabinets of Cathy Ashton and Peter Mandelson. 

Renate Nikolay started her career in the European Commission in 2003 in DG Trade after having worked as a diplomat at the German Permanent Representation to the EU in Brussels and at the Federal Economics Ministry in Berlin. 

Renate Nikolay has a law degree from the Free University of Berlin (Erstes und Zweites Staatsexamen) and a Master of Laws as Fulbright Scholar from Washington, DC. She also participated in an Erasmus exchange with Grenoble/France.

Thomas Petri, Bavarian State Commissioner for Data Protection
 

Thomas Petri studied law and worked from 1996 to 2000 as a lawyer in a commercial law firm. He then worked as a research associate with a research focus on constitutional law, police law and legal philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt.

After completing his doctorate, he moved to the Independent State Center for Data Protection in Schleswig-Holstein in the summer of 2000, where he was head of the department responsible for the supervision of the private sector. Four years later he was seconded as a research assistant to the First Senate of the Federal Constitutional Court. On July 1, 2006, he became Deputy Berlin Commissioner for Data Protection and Freedom of Information and Head of the Legal Department.

He became the Bavarian State Commissioner for Data Protection On July 1, 2009. In addition, he has been an honorary professor at the Munich University of Applied Sciences since March 30, 2016.

On 25 June 2021, the Bundesrat elected him as deputy member of the European Data Protection Board representing the federal states of Germany.

Anu Talus, Chair of the European Data Protection Board
 

Anu Talus has served as the Finnish Information Commissioner since autumn 2020. She is the Head of the Office of the Information Commissioner (TSV) and the Chair of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB).

Prior to her work at the IMY, Talus served as Senior Adviser at the Ministry of Justice for over ten years. At the Ministry of Justice she led the implementation of the GDPR in Finland and acted as representative of the Finnish government in the EU GDPR negotiations. Talus has also worked at the European Commission as Seconded National Expert.

Talus holds a Doctor of Laws degree and a Master of Laws degree from the University of Helsinki and a Master of Arts degree from the University of Vaasa.

Machi Tsokou, Chair of the Council of the EU’s Working Party on Data Protection and Representative of the Cypriot Presidency of the Council of the EU 

Wojciech Wiewiórowski, European Data Protection Supervisor, EDPS
 

Wojciech Wiewiórowski has been the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) since December 6th 2019.

He is also an adjunct professor in the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk. He was, among others, an adviser in the field of e-government and information society for the Minister of Interior and Administration, and the Director of the Informatisation Department at the Ministry of Interior and Administration in Poland. He also represented Poland in the committee on Interoperability Solutions for European Public Administrations (the ISA Committee) assisting the European Commission.

Wojciech Wiewiórowski was also the Inspector General for the Protection of Personal Data (Polish Data Protection Commissioner) between 2010-2014 and the Vice Chair of the Working Party Article 29 in 2014. In December 2014, he was appointed Assistant European Data Protection Supervisor. After the death of the Supervisor - Giovanni Buttarelli in August 2019 - he replaced Mr. Buttarelli as acting EDPS.

His areas of scientific activity include first of all Polish and European IT law, processing and security of information, legal information retrieval systems, informatisation of public administration, and application of new IT tools (semantic web, legal ontologies, cloud, blockchain) in legal information processing.