An inside look into DFF’s past and future events on collective redress
As technologies such as mass data collection, profiling, and AI-driven decision-making continue to spread, tech-driven harms are increasingly taking on a collective dimension and disproportionately impacting marginalised communities. To effectively confront the extensive and large-scale digital rights violations which stem from these harms, we believe it’s crucial to engage in different forms of collective action and to harness the collective power of those affected before the courts through strategic litigation.
Collective redress is a promising yet relatively unexplored avenue towards achieving these goals. With the EU Representative Actions Directive (RAD) entering into force, this form of collective action is likely to gain much more traction within the digital rights strategic litigation space in Europe.
For these reasons, it has been and will remain one of our main focus areas at DFF, in particular through two projects within our Community Strengthening and Support programme: our EU-funded digiRISE project which aims to increase awareness of the potential of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in the defense and protection of digital rights, and our Platform Accountability project supported by Luminate Strategic Initiatives.
For example, last year we brought back our in-person Strategic Litigation Retreats with a thematic focus on collective redress and platform accountability. The first was held in Greece in partnership with our friends at Homodigitalis, and we held a second one earlier on this year at the foot of the German Alps near Munich.
We also hosted a fifth edition of our DFF Speaker Series titled Collective Redress – Lessons from Around the Globe which highlighted collective redress mechanisms and case studies from Europe and around the world.
Speaker Series: Collective Redress – Lessons from Around the Globe
digiRISE Collective Redress Workshop
During June of this year, we organised a three-day in-person digiRISE Consultation and Feedback Workshop held in Berlin, which aimed to provide a collaborative space focused not only on taking stock of main legal developments and collating information around available collective redress mechanisms, but also on identifying opportunities for cross-jurisdictional collective redress cases by international groups of civil society organisations, and discussing a series of selected case studies presented by participants.
This workshop is part of a broader digiRISE set of activities focusing on mapping available collective redress mechanisms at a Member State level to assist civil society organinastions in the enforcement of digital rights on a collective level. You can keep up to date and follow our digiRISE activities on these and other topics here.
Upcoming Workshops on Collective Redress
At DFF, we plan to continue to build on the knowledge, insights and the network generated throughout the projects outlined above through more Community Strengthening and Support activities. Among these, we will be hosting two upcoming workshops focused on a wide range of key issues related to collective redress.
The first will be an invite-only two-day Collective Action for Platform Accountability workshop which will take place next week on 4-5 September in Berlin. The workshop will have a significant focus on discussing different funding models and strategies on how to negotiate with third-party funders. It will also include sessions on key issues such as scope, standing and admissibility of claims, leveraging legal frameworks like the GDPR and the DSA, as well as some of the more practical or administrative aspects around running collective redress litigation projects.
The second and final workshop in this particular series will take place later on in the year, and we will focus on other important aspects which our network has expressed interest in, especially quantification of damages and (tech) evidence gathering, among others. If you have any expertise or experiences you think could be helpful to share with others by attending the workshop, or if you are working on collective redress in the digital rights space and could benefit from attending the event and learning more about these topics, do not hesitate to reach out to us at projects@digitalfreedomfund.org. We’d love to hear from you!
“Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or CERV Programme. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.”