Consumers rely on global trade and supply networks to get their daily bread, medicines, clothes, furniture, vehicles, fuel and personal tech. Globalization is such an inherent part of consumer markets that few of us give it any thought - until crisis hits.

Consumers purchasing a familiar product might not feel like part of a geopolitical and economic battleground, but there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that is affecting what they can buy at what price. We want to Start Talking about the need to give the consumer impact of the current global trade disruption proper attention.

During the webinar, our experts will explore some live trade challenges like Electric Vehicles, Food and Farming and Product Safety and ask how we got to this point, and what the impact on consumers now and in the future could be, with questions like:

- What are the benefits of global trade for consumers in this area?

- Where has trade struggled to deliver on wider, non-economic outcomes in this area?

- How could it be done in a way that delivers on economic targets and beyond, e.g. climate goals; SDGs; digital security; trust and good consumer outcomes?

- What are the wider social, economic, political issues at stake?

Participants:

• Lea Auffret, Senior International Affairs Policy Officer, BEUC

• Rodrigo Carcamo, Chief of Commodities Policy Implementation and Outreach Section, Division on International Trade and Commodities, UNCTAD (UN Conference on Trade and Development)

• Antonino Serra Cambaceres, ADELCO (a leading Argentinian consumer organisation) and Ibero-American Forum of Government Consumer Protection Agencies (FIAGC)

• Harald Past, Head of International Trade and Taxation, EuroCommerce

• Stefano da Empoli, President, I-Com, the Institute for Competitiveness

Multiple newspaper outlets, social media platforms and streaming services have introduced a subscription model for those who want to use the service but don’t want to consent to sharing their personal data to support advertising.
We want to Start Talking about what this means for the future of consumer online services that have grown up in synergy with the ad-based business model:
- Are we heading to a future of ‘pay to play’ and is this the biggest disruption to the way consumers access online services that have become gateways to the digital world?
- Is this ‘forced consent’ or ‘consumer choice’?
- Shouldn’t consumers expect privacy to be respected whether they pay for a service or not?
- How can an appropriate, affordable price be set for a paid, non-targeted advertising service?
- What implications does it have if two options are on the table? 

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- Liz Brandt, CEO, Ctrl-Shift

- Tobias Judin, Head of International Section, Norwegian Data Protection Authority

- Agustin Reyna, Head of Legal & Economic Affairs, BEUC

- Nathalie Laneret, Vice-President Criteo, Government Affairs and Public Policy

Online scams are becoming endemic and cybercriminals have a free run at consumers. New technology like AI can be weaponized to fake voices and faces, to learn even more about people’s behaviour and to ramp up the scale of fraud. Yet in enforcers and consumers’ hands AI can also lead the fight back, with for example, mass scale monitoring and automated takedowns of suspicious sites and links.
This month’s Start Talking will discuss new technology front in the battle to win back the internet from scams:
- How does the industrial scale online consumer scam infrastructure function and how is new technology changing it?
- Will GenAI change scams forever - what future strategies and plays can we expect from fraudsters?
- Can we use AI as ‘technology for good’ help to respond, deflect or enforce against scammers?
- How can we raise consumer awareness and tool people up for the online world - what role does AI and tech have here?
- Can we apply lessons from how generative AI is impacting on other online challenges like disinformation?

Participants:

- Brent Carey, CEO, Netsafe New Zealand

- Dr Hannah Shimko, CEO, Online Dating Association

- Jorij Abraham, Managing Director, Global Anti-Scam Alliance

This month’s #StartTalking will explore innovations in synthetic, lab-grown meat and other alternative proteins in development and find out how it fits into the wider food revolution.
Whether it’s health or environmental concerns that are driving new consumer new choices for plant-based alternatives to meat or even synthetic proteins, it’s clear that nothing is off the menu.
Proponents argue cell-based meat will significantly reduce the amount of land, water, energy and feed currently used in the meat industry, improve food security and meet the demands of a growing global population. But as with other novel foods questions are being asked about the safety and potential health impact of synthetic proteins. We will ask a diverse panel of food future experts:
-Are consumers ready for lab-grown meat as a protein source?
- Might other innovations emerge as alternatives to current energy and land intensive dairy and meat production?
-Is tech the answer to the joint, global challenges of food security and environmental degradation or should we be focusing on localised, sustainable farming instead?
-Can we balance innovation and safety when it comes to lab-based meat and other proteins?

This month Start Talking will revisit ChatGPT and other generative AI systems with a two part webinar focusing on data, copyright and privacy.
Part One: Data In
We will look at the huge range of data that feeds generative AI training models. For creatives, how are their music, words and images used and what implications does this have for legal rights like copyright and for the future of the creative industry? For consumers - what does a world of computer generated culture look and feel like?

Part two: Data Out
Can the data coming out of these models be trusted? When does shaky advice become an infringement of consumer laws on misleading information? Is it possible to arm ourselves against the information deluge of large language models, or is action at the top of the pipeline needed?

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- Lodovico Benvenuti, Managing Director, IFPI European Office

- StJohn Deakins, Founder and CEO of CitizenMe

- Christian D’Cunha, Data policy, privacy and cybersecurity, European Commission

- Calli Schroeder, Senior Counsel and Global Privacy Counsel, EPIC

- Elias Papadopoulos, Director of Policy, DOT.Europe

This month’s #StartTalking will explore how better information can help deliver a circular economy that makes the most of our planet’s limited resources and designs out waste. We’ll bring together key members of the CircThread project which has piloted the idea of digital product identities that provide vital information about appliances to support a lifetime of repair, replacement and recycling.

But how easy will this be in reality?

- Are consumers willing and able to be part of this information chain?

- Are manufacturers ready to shift to digital product IDs to help the circular economy transition, or are they too entrenched in the “take, make, waste” model we have had for so long?

- How will information be formatted - do we need standards to make sure it’s interoperable and accessible across the whole supply and repair lifecycle?

Participants

• Rembrandt Koppelaar, Director of Research & Innovation, EcoWise

• Chiara Giovannini, Deputy Director-General, Senior Manager Policy & Innovation, ANEC

• Christian Rousseau, Project Officer Statistical Surveys, Test Achats/Test Aankoop

• Korrina Hegarty, Policy Director on Environment, APPLIA

• Wojtek Stitarz, Policy Officer, DG ENV, European Commission

Food prices have been rising steadily since mid-2021. Today food price inflation in the EU/eurozone stands at over 15%, defying the overall drop in inflation to 6.9%. A recent Euroconsumers survey revealed that four in five consumers believe companies are taking advantage of the cost of living crisis for profit. Our members have found that products are shrinking and prices are rising. At the same time half of consumers surveyed don’t trust national and EU authorities to control unjustified price increases.
Why is this the case?
Start Talking this month will take a 360o look at the food price crisis to find out what’s causing the eye watering surge in prices and when consumers can expect prices to calm.
Is it still about post-covid and the war in Ukraine or is more going on?
Are the ‘food oligarchs’ behind the handful of global food corporations controlling access to a basic necessity?
Are hedge funds profiteering by “betting on hunger” for a future windfall while ordinary people can’t put food on the table?
Are supermarkets guilty of not passing on savings to customers?

• Amaury Ghijselings, Research and Advocacy Officer Food Sovereignty, CNCD 11.11.11

• Agustin Reyna, Director, Legal and Economic Affairs, BEUC

• Vincent Colot, Senior Financial Analyst, Euroconsumers

• Francesco Tramontin, Vice President EU Institutional Relations and Group Public Policy Center at Ferrero

• Anton Delbarre, Chief economist, Eurocommerce

All across the world, countries are striving for the joint prize of a green, sustainable economy and digitally-enabled prosperity and growth. In Europe this ‘twin transition’ is shaping economic and political priorities.

Digitalisation and sustainability can both bring stability and opportunities, and together programmes like smart energy grids can deliver jobs, efficiency and eventually better prices for consumers. But our climate systems need to be fixed on a global scale and here, the two ambitions don’t always align.

As digital technology gets ever more advanced it becomes more energy intensive. Zero carbon data centres are emerging but as more people come online the demand for processing data and carrying out secure transactions is accelerating.

- How quickly can technology become climate neutral across the world?

- What can we learn from ambitious programmes to use digital technology to dramatically reduce energy use and create a cleaner, greener, circular economy?

- Will the growth in connectivity and advanced tech such as blockchain, AI and large language models like ChatGPT undermine anything that technology could do to accelerate the green transition?

- Do we need to rethink how we innovate with digital technology and put the environment at the centre of strategies and decisions? Is there something in its business model that makes it incompatible with sustainability? Or is it a question of fixing the energy problem?

- How can institutions, companies and consumers push for mutually supporting digital and climate solutions?

It’s time for stakeholders from across the board to Start Talking and think big about how we can reach both goals in time.

Technological solutions can and need to help manage the complex transition towards sustainability and climate neutrality.

Particular applications such as blockchain have come under scrutiny for their energy intensity, but all across the system, data centres, content delivery and transactions carry a carbon cost.

Our panel, moderated by Liz Coll:

- Ilias Iakovidis, Adviser DG CONNECT, European Commission

- Anju Mangal, Head of Asia-Pacific, Global Digital Inclusion Partnership

- Fieke Jansen, Critical Infrastructure Lab, University of Amsterdam

- Jake Oster, Director, Energy and Environment Policy, EMEA at Amazon Web Services (AWS)

- Emma Fryer, Partner at ERM

Everyone is fascinated by ChatGPT - the latest impressive iteration of machine learning, which can deliver articulate and readable responses to natural language questions. It joins a burgeoning array of so-called ‘generative’ technologies, a form of Artificial Intelligence that can create its own images, text, speech or search.

The possibilities are endless – and not just for obvious use cases like chatbots or producing articles. Could these types of generative AI design drugs? Write code? Produce whole feature films? And what risks does this pose - will we see deepfakes scamming consumers, students’ essays faked by machine? Do we face a future where we can’t tell what is real and what is a cheat?

Euroconsumers’ Start Talking webinar will explain the technology, how it’s trained and how it might be used and discuss with a panel of experts from industry, academia and consumer research what it could all mean:

· Is it a flash in the pan that will burn out or are we at the point of no return for general purpose AI?

· What will consumer applications look like and how will consumers respond?

· Will content-driven sectors, which includes consumer publications, be replaced by machines?

· What might be the uses and abuses of generative technologies like ChatGPT that can create near-perfect human-like interactions?

· Is the EU AI Act ready to tackle some of the ethical and safety risks of advanced generative tech like ChatGPT – or will it be out of date before it’s published?

Participants

· Brando Benifei, Joint lead negotiator of EU AI Act (via pre-recorded video)

· Colin Strong, Head of Behavioural Science at Ipsos Global, author of Human Data and writer on human-technology interfaces

· Cornelia Kutterer, Senior Director, Responsible Tech & Competition, European Government Affairs, Microsoft

· Aleksandar Brezar, Journalist, Euronews

· Gabriele Mazzini, Team Leader - Artificial Intelligence Act, European Commission

· Daniel Leufer, Senior Policy Analyst, Access Now

The European Commission proposal for large online platforms to contribute more to the costs of internet infrastructure has again raised the question of how our online system is funded.

📣 Our panel: