Digital Affairs – Chancellery
of the Prime Minister

The moniker D9+ denotes a group of like-minded countries, characterised by a similar approach to digital issues: Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden. Poland and the Czechia participate in the works of the Group as observers. On Monday, the ministers of the D9+ Group, as well as delegates from Germany, Croatia and the European Commission attended a meeting in Warsaw.

The D9+ Group focuses on dialogue with the representatives of the business world, whose views and insights may influence the future legislation in the digital field. Because of that focus, the meeting on Monday started with presentations of several Polish companies, whose representatives shared their insights and opinions on the functioning of the European digital services market.

Another key item on the agenda was the showcase of business ideas of Polish digital start-ups, as well as innovative projects, which give the Polish economy a potential for growth.

In the afternoon, ministers debated at a round table on the planned work on amendments to the existing legislation, looking for solutions to the most pressing issues of this day and time, including dealing with illegal content by on-line platforms, moderating harmful content to minimise its negative impact on individuals and societies as a whole, as well as the level of reliance on content filtering algorithms.

“We should agree on our common interests and talk about working out a common stance, which the European Commission should consider in the process of working for the new Digital Services Act. While we are analysing the regulations, we should keep in mind that we are dealing not only with economic principles, but also with human rights, namely the freedom of speech and the right of access to information,” said Wanda Buk, Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs. “The implementation of effective mechanisms for removing illegal content should not lead to censorship or excessive lockdown of the Internet,” she added.

On Monday, Deputy Minister Wanda Buk also attended a meeting with Mona Keijzer, the Dutch Secretary of State for Economic Affairs and Climate Policy. Their meeting concerned competition policy with regard to digital platforms.

“We need to promote competition in the digital market, especially among platforms. In particular, we should prevent monopolisation of data collection and restrictions on access to data. We support the development of interoperability by facilitating data transfer between platforms, as well as open data policies,” said Wanda Buk, Deputy Minister of Digital Affairs. “When regulating the platform sector, we should pay particular attention to small and medium-sized enterprises. We should not forget the vast divide in terms of resources available to the largest players on the market and local entities. We should avoid imposing excessive liability on Internet intermediaries for content published on their platforms, since this may lead to the excessive deletion and locking down of on-line content, thus limiting freedom of expression,” the deputy head of the Ministry added.

The bilateral talks also covered the subject of next year’s Internet Governance Forum - IGF 2020, which will be hosted by Poland in Katowice.