What does it mean to make digital fairness European? Fairness is now at the centre of EU digital regulation. The Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, the Data Act, the AI Act, the GDPR and the renewed interest in Article 102 TFEU all use the vocabulary of fairness, contestability, autonomy and accountability. Yet the meaning of fairness in Europe is old, layered and politically contested. It goes back to just price, moral economy, ordoliberalism, the social market economy and long-running debates about public authority and private power.
This one-day research workshop, organised by FIDMA with funding from the Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES), treats digital fairness as a question about how modern Europe has changed. It does not treat it as a narrow technology-law issue. Researchers from law, political science, media studies and European studies will ask:

• How did fairness move from moral economy and just price into today’s regulatory
  vocabulary?
• How do EU digital and AI laws reshape ideas of autonomy, democracy and consumer
  citizenship?
• Who gets to define fair AI, and how do European fairness norms travel globally?
• What does digital sovereignty mean in practice, and who benefits from it?

The day brings together researchers from across the Öresund region and wider Europe: Malmö, Lund, Copenhagen, CBS, Uppsala, KTH, Münster, Ilmenau, Humboldt, NOVA and the University of East London. It closes with a public roundtable with researchers, policymakers and enforcement authorities.

Programme

09:00–09:10 Registration and coffee
09:10–09:15 Welcome address (speaker to be confirmed)

09:15–10:30 Morning Panel 1 | Fairness in Digital and AI Markets
Chair: Annegrete Engel — Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer, Department of Law, Lund University

• 09:15 – 09:30 Behrang Kianzad — Senior Researcher and Lecturer, Malmö University; Fabrizio Esposito — Associate Professor in Private Law, NOVA School of Law
  • Digital Fairness Defined as Autonomy and Sovereignty
• 09:30 – 09:45 Jan-Frederick Göhsl — Junior Professor, University of Münster; Juliane
  Mendelsohn — Junior Professor, Technische Universität Ilmenau
  • Distinct and Applied Notions of EU Private Law Fairness — A Fair Bargain?
• 09:45 – 10:00 Dr. Miroslava Marinova — Senior Lecturer in Commercial Law, University of East London
  • Algorithmic Personalised Pricing and Digital Fairness: Beyond Exploitative Abuse

10:00 – 10:30 Joint panel discussion; moderated by Annegrete Engel
10:30–10:45 Fika / coffee break

10:45–12:15 Morning Panel 2 | Autonomy, Sovereignty and AI Politics
Chair: Behrang Kianzad — Senior Researcher and Lecturer, Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University

• 10:45–11:00 Johan Linåker, Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Lund University
  • Empirical software engineering, open technologies, and digital sovereignty
• 11:00–11:15 Eduardo Gill Pedro — Associate Professor in EU Law / Senior Lecturer,
  Department of Law, Lund University
  • Human Oversight in the AI Act: The Case of Employees of AI Systems
• 11:15–11:30 Katja de Vries, Associate Professor & Andreas Kotsios, Associate Professor — Uppsala University; André Holzapfel, Associate Professor — KTH Royal Institute of Technology
  • Beyond Idealized Policy and Legal Imaginaries: Fairness in AI Creation and Use. Empirical Lessons Learned from the Data4Sci Project
• 11:30–11.45 Kathrine Søs Jacobsen Cesko — Assistant Professor, Copenhagen Business School
  • Danish Implementation and Enforcement of the DMA

11.45–12:15 Joint panel discussion; moderated by Behrang Kianzad
12:15–13:30 Lunch

13:30–15:00 Afternoon Panel | Sovereignty and Fairness in Digital and AI Markets
Chair: Fabrizio Esposito — Associate Professor, Nova School of Law, Lisbon

• 13:30–13:45 Dechun Zhang, Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Communication, University of Copenhagen & Yuxi Huang, Doctoral Researcher, GRESEC, Université Grenoble Alpes
  • Who Gets to Define Fair AI? Corporate Sociotechnical Imaginaries of Fairness and Sovereignty in Europe, China, and the United States
• 13:45–14:00 Jess Haynie-Lavelle — Doctoral candidate, Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University
  • The Politics of Ethical AI: Sensemaking, Digital Sovereignty and Citizen Participation in the European Union
• 14:15–14:30 Caterina Bresci — Doctoral Candidate, Humboldt University of Berlin
  • Fairness and Good Faith: Still a Binomial in Platform Law?

14:45–15:15 Joint panel discussion, moderated by Fabrizio Esposito
15:15–15:30 Fika / coffee break
15:30–16:30 Closing Roundtable

Annegret Engel — Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer, Lund University; Eduardo Gill Pedro — Associate Professor / Senior Lecturer, Lund University; Juliane Mendelsohn — Junior Professor, Technische Universität Ilmenau; Jan-Frederick Göhsl — Junior Professor, University of Münster; Danish / Swedish political representative(s) — TBC; Swedish enforcement authority / AI Sweden representative — TBC

Practical information

Participation in the paper sessions is by invitation. The closing roundtable is open to the public.

The registration link is found here and please do register no later than 30th November: https://mau.se/en/calendar/cemesfidma-seminar-towards-european-digital-fairness-and-sovereignty/#accordion-645081

The workshop is co-funded by the Centre for Modern European Studies (CEMES), University of Copenhagen, and hosted by the Department of Global Political Studies, Malmö University.

EU Law Live’s Competition Corner is organising a symposium on the intersection between competition enforcement powers and privacy. Investigatory powers conceived for filing cabinets are now exercised over mailboxes, laptops and phones, and what they capture is personal as much as professional. Where the line between the two regimes falls has become one of the liveliest debates in EU competition procedure, and the courts are drawing it case by case.

On 16 July 2026, the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice handed down its much-awaited ruling in Imagens Médicas Integradas (C-258/23, C-259/23 and C-260/23). The Court held that Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter do not preclude a national competition authority from seizing professional emails containing personal data during an inspection of business premises without prior judicial authorisation, provided its powers are strictly framed by law and accompanied by full and effective ex post judicial review. In the same breath, the Court signalled that access to devices belonging personally to directors or employees calls for prior review by a court or an independent body.

The EU Courts and the EFTA Court have handed down other significant rulings on the same intersection recently: see e.g. Michelin v Commission (T-188/24); Red Bull and Others v Commission (T-306/23); Nuctech (Orders in T-284/24 R and C-720/24 P(R)); Toska ehf. and Lyf og heilsa hf. v ESA and SKEL fjárfestingafélag hf. v ESA (Joined Cases E-31/24 and E-32/24); Broadcom (T-280/26 R); Vivendi (T-1097/23) and Lagardère (T-1119/23). Further cases are pending: see e.g. Ronos (C-619/23); Red Bull and Others v Commission (C-865/25 P); Nuctech (T-284/24); and Meta Platforms v Commission (C-496/23 P and C-497/23 P); among others.

Against this background, they are looking for short, sharp and opinionated pieces. The themes we have in mind include:

• the balance between effective competition enforcement and the protection of the fundamental rights to privacy and data protection;
• the treatment of devices used for both personal and business purposes, including whether device ownership remains an appropriate proxy to determine the level of protection;
• the handling of privacy and data protection of information held in digital ecosystems;
  the scope and proportionality of requests for information and inspection decisions;
  the adequacy of ex ante judicial authorisation, ex post judicial review and other safeguards;
• the balance between the effectiveness of EU/EEA law and higher national constitutional or procedural standards, and constitutional identity;
  legal professional privilege;
• extraterritorial reach of EU/EEA investigations where compliance would breach foreign data protection or secrecy rules;
• the EEA dimension and homogeneity between the EU and EFTA systems; and
  what all of this implies for the announced revision of Regulation 1/2003.

The list is indicative rather than exhaustive. They equally welcome contributions from other areas of EU law that shed light on these questions, whether from the DSA and DMA, financial regulation, data protection law or the case law of the European Court of Human Rights. They are also happy to publish more than one piece on the same question where the perspectives differ.

EU Law Live’s full author guidelines and terms are sent on acceptance, and a summary is available under ‘Publish with us’ at eulawlive.com.

Publication

The symposium opens in early November 2026 and pieces appear on a rolling basis, so there is some flexibility on the date for final texts.  Once the symposium closes, the contributions are compiled into a booklet, as with their earlier Competition Corner symposia, which can be found here.

Key dates

Deadline for proposals Tuesday 15 September 2026
Notification of selection Monday 21 September 2026
Deadline for final texts Wednesday 21 October 2026
Symposium opens Early November 2026 (rolling publication)

For more detailed information, please visit their call for papers here: https://eulawlive.com/call-for-contributions-symposium-competition-enforcement-powers-and-privacy/

We are pleased to announce the Second Annual Online Conference on Fairness in Digital Markets and Artificial Intelligence to be held online on 15 May 2026.

To register, please fill in our form below.

You can find the conference details in the attachment below.

FIDMA Second Online Conference on Fairness in Digital Markets and Artificial Intelligence

Conference Programme

09:30–9:45 Welcoming Address

Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, President of the European Law Institute will mark ELI’s 15th Anniversary as part of the ELI in the World series

9:45–10:00 Introduction

Fabrizio Esposito, Behrang Kianzad, Emilia Mišćenić, Nada Ina Pauer, Contributing to Digital Fairness with Synthetic Imagination

10:00-11:00 Panel 1 – Fairness & Fundamental Rights (moderator Emilia Mišćenić)

Petra Weingerl, The Notion of Consumer in EU Law: Between Traditional Concepts and Digital Realities

Jess Haynie-Lavelle, Ethical Challenges of Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Andrés Chomczyk Penedo, A New Imaginary for Fairness? How the Common European Data Spaces Bridge Between Human-centric Protection and a Competitive Economy

11:00 – 11:10 Break

11:10-12:30 Panel 2 – AI & Dark Patterns (moderator Fabrizio Esposito)

Aytaj Almammadova, What is the “Meaning” of Meaningful Information? Crucial Fairness Criteria in AI Decision-Making

Roberta Montinaro, AI Chatbots, Digital Addiction, and Emotional Dependence: A Fairness Analysis under EU Law

Monica Schellemans, The Consumer and Creator Implications of Fairness in Music Recommender Systems

Sarah de Heer, Who Needs to Know? Transparency in Medical AI for Patients, Physicians, and Supervisory Authorities

12:30 – 13:00 Break

13:00 – 14:00 Panel 3 – Data Protection & Online Platforms (moderator Behrang Kianzad)

Leonardo Lazzaro, Beyond Consent: Rethinking Digital Fairness in the Age of Generative AI

Miłosz Malaga, From Fairness to Effectiveness: The DMA’s Rights-Centred Architecture

Maura Mattalia and Matteo Pignatti, Digital Sovereignty and the Euro: Legal Frameworks for State Control over Digital Service Providers in the European Union

14:00 – 14:15 Break

14:15 – 15:15 Panel 4 – Enforcement (moderator Nada Ina Pauer)

Laura Zoboli and Joanna Mazur, Enforcement Design in EU Digital Regulation: Lessons for the Digital Fairness Act

Viktória Harsági, The Role of Algorithms in Enforcing Claims in Civil Justice – AI in Decision-Making Process and Beyond

Talia Schwartz-Maor Berkley/Haifa, GenAI as an Inclusion Mechanism in Judicial Decision-Making

15:15-15:30 Closing Remarks

The Organising Committee

Emilia Mišćenić (University of Rijeka) • Fabrizio Esposito (NOVA School of Law and CEDIS) • Behrang Kianzad (Malmö University) • Nada Ina Pauer (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition)

The conference is supported by Institute for Global Political Studies, Malmö University; Nova School of Law; European Law Institute Croatian Hub

https://www.aclu.lu.se/formular/registration-fairness-digital-markets-and-artificial-intelligence 

Updated program

08.30 – 09.00 Registration and Breakfast
09.00 – 09.05 Welcome and Practical Information by the Organisers
09.05 – 09.20 Keynote 1 – Prof. Dr. Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, President of the European Law Institute / Full Professor of Commercial Law/ Director of the
Chair AI: Foundations & Frontiers at the University Carlos III of Madrid

09.20 – 10.35 Panel 1 – Fairness & Fundamental Rights
Chair: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Annegret Engel, Lund University
4×15 min presentations (60 min + 15 min discussion)

10.35 – 10.55 Break
10.55 – 12.10 Panel 2 – AI & Dark Patterns

Chair: Assist. Prof. Dr. Michael Strange, Malmö University
4×15 min presentations (60 min + 15 min discussion)

12.10 – 13.10 Lunch

13.10 – 13.30 Keynote 2 – Prof. Dr. Mateja Durovic, Judge of the European Court of Human Rights / King’s College London

13.30 – 14.45 Panel 3 – Data Protection & Online Platforms
Chair: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Fabrizio Esposito, Nova Law School
4×15 min presentations (60 min + 15 min discussion)

14.45 – 15.05 Break and fika

15.05 – 15.20 Keynote 3 – Prof. Dr. Jörgen Hettne, Judge of the General Court, Court of Justice of the European Union
15.20 – 16.40 Panel 4 – Enforcement

Chair: Dr. Behrang Kianzad, Malmö University
3×15 min presentations (45 min + 15 min discussion)

16.40 – 16.50 Break
16.50 – 17.30 Closing Panel – Contributing to digital fairness with synthetic imagination

Practical Details:

Date & time: 18th March 2026, 08.30-17.30.
Venue: Pufendorf Hall, Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden and Online (Zoom)
How to get to Lund and the conference venue:

The nearest airport to our venue is Copenhagen Kastrup airport (CPH)
From there, you can take the train, which is conveniently located under the airport, straight to Lund
You can buy tickets on the Skånetrafiken website: https://www.skanetrafiken.se/
Alternatively, you can buy tickets at the airport when you land
A one-way journey from CPH Airport Kastrup to Lund C is 180 SEK and will take 35-40 mins
Recommended Hotels:
(Pricing given is accurate as of 4th February for a 1 night stay)

Brunius Guesthouse – 715 SEK
Finn Apartments – 788 SEK
Motel L Lund – 804 SEK
MillasVilla – 1,040 SEK
Best Western Plus Park City Lund SEK 1,201
Lilla Hotellet – 1,292 SEK
Venue for Conference Dinner for all speakers:
Restaurang VED, Mårtenstorget 3, Lund.

Please send us your dietary preferences and any allergies.

All the best and looking very much forward to meeting you soon in person!

On behalf of the organising committee consisting of Behrang Kianzad (Institute for Global Political Studies, Malmö University), Emilia Mišćenić (Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka), Fabrizio Esposito (NOVA School of Law, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Nada-Ina Pauer (Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition, München).

NAIL Conference 2026

AI, Finance & Law: Innovation, Integrity, and the Future of Markets

2–3 July 2026 in Hamburg, Germany

Dear all,

The Hamburg Network for Artificial Intelligence and Law (NAIL) will host a conference on “AI, Finance & Law: Innovation, Integrity, and the Future of Markets” on 2–3 July 2026 in Hamburg, Germany, and invites paper submissions.

This in-person conference will seek to explore a broad range of regulatory issues in relation to, inter alia, the following aspects:

• How should financial markets law respond to the adoption of AI systems by financial institutions and intermediaries? What are the economic effects of AI-driven financial markets, and are there risks to market integrity, efficiency, and to market stability?
• What governance mechanisms ensure accountability, transparency, and auditability of AI in financial services? How can market supervisors and investors effectively monitor the integrity of new AI-driven market players?
• How does the EU AI Act interact with existing and upcoming financial regulatory frameworks? How does the AI Act and associated rules apply to financial-markets use-cases such as algorithmic trading, risk models, and credit scoring?
• How can regulators balance innovation, competition, and financial stability in regulating AI? What forms of legal experimentation (sandboxing, testbeds, proportionality tools) support safe AI adoption and ensure innovation? 
• What are cross-border challenges with regulating AI across the EU and globally? What can the EU learn from global regulatory models such as the US, UK, Singapore, China, and international standard setters?
• Twin Transformation: How can advances in AI be balanced with sustainable development and green finance?

The conference organizers invite papers from scholars, policymakers, and practitioners on each of these topics, and on any other topic of relevance to the conference theme. In particular, the organisers encourage the submission of papers that examine these topics from an interdisciplinary, international and/or comparative perspective.

Further information is available here. 

Submission Process

Papers should be submitted online at https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/AiNwn0fwmk. To facilitate blind review, names and other identifying information should be redacted from the submitted paper. Any queries related to the submission process can be directed to nail@ile-hamburg.de.

Deadline for submission of papers for the conference is January 23, 2026. Authors will be notified regarding whether their paper has been accepted for presentation at the conference by February 20, 2026.

NAIL will cover transportation costs (economy class) and hotel accommodation in Hamburg for up to two nights, and invites participants to a conference dinner on July 2.

We gratefully acknowledge funding from ZEIT STIFTUNG BUCERIUS. The conference is supported by the European Banking Institute (EBI).

Kind regards,

Prof. Dr. Christoph Kumpan, LL.M. (Univ. of Chicago)

Prof. Dr. Wolf-Georg Ringe, M.Jur. (Oxon)

About NAIL:

The Hamburg Network for AI & Law (NAIL) is a cooperation between Professor Christoph Kumpan (Bucerius Law School) and Professor Georg Ringe (University of Hamburg). The network provides a platform for academic exchange and joint research projects in the field of AI and law. At the same time, the network facilitates dialogue and engagement with the broader public.

About once a month, NAIL hosts a lecture event with leading scientists, policy makers and industry experts. This seminar series is kindly supported by the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius.

More information about NAIL is available at http://NAIL.ile-hamburg.de.

Feel free to contact us by email at nail@ile-hamburg.de. You can subscribe to our newsletter by sending an email to nail@ile-hamburg.de with the subject “Subscribe”.

We invite submissions from scholars for a conference on the shaping of competition in the digital age, taking place on 26-27 May 2026 in Düsseldorf, Germany. We are particularly looking forward to contributions that focus on the regulatory regimes in the EU (Digital Markets Act), the UK (Digital Markets Competition & Consumers Act), and Germany (Section 19a of the competition act).

Please send an extended abstract of 700-1000 words to the SCiDA team (team(at)scidaproject.com) by 18 January 2026. Please include a declaration in accordance with the ASCOLA Transparency and Disclosure Declaration.

The SCiDA team will select submissions and notify selected contributors by early April 2026. Selected scholars may request reimbursement of travel expenses if participation cannot be financed otherwise. Depending on available funds, preference will be given to junior scholars.

Mark your calendars! We look forward to your submissions and to seeing you in May!

Background and Objectives:

In response to the rise of digital platforms and ecosystems, an increasing number of jurisdictions have been rethinking their competition law regimes, resulting in amended policies or novel legislation for digital markets. The DMA in the European Union, the DMCCA in the United Kingdom, and Section 19a GWB in Germany stand as pioneering examples.

The research project “Shaping Competition in the Digital Age (SCiDA)”, a joint project of the Universities of Düsseldorf and Exeter, accompanies the regulatory initiatives from the beginning and aims to answer three questions: How do the new rules in the different jurisdictions work in practice? What proves effective for reaching the goals of the new rules? What are the elements of the new normative and institutional framework for safeguarding competition in the digital age?

The conference will provide a platform for discussion and assessment of existing and future approaches to digital competition regulation. Can we see best practices after the first stages of enforcement?

The two-day conference will explore the lessons, challenges, and opportunities arising from competition regulation and enforcement in digital markets across the EU, the UK, and Germany. Bringing together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners, it aims to promote a challenge- and solution-oriented dialogue on the present and future of digital competition law.

The SCiDA research project is funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).

Ambition of the Conference:

The SCiDA conference seeks to engage with groundbreaking scholarship addressing current and emerging challenges in digital competition law. We particularly welcome submissions that try to identify best practices. Submissions may be unpublished academic papers, contributions from early-career researchers’ papers (e.g. PhD thesis chapters), and early-stage project ideas on topics such as:

• Rethinking the fundamentals of digital competition law
• Designation and obligation challenges of the DMA, DMCCA and GWB
• Effective compliance and regulatory approaches
• Enforcement structures and practical challenges
• Procedural issues and stakeholder involvement
• The interplay between competition and innovation in digital markets
• New technological challenges (such as AI and advanced infrastructure)
• Geopolitical upheaval and strategic competition law/policy

The conference will also feature panels with enforcers and experts, and will be held in person only. Further information on the conference will be available at www.scidaproject.com. If you have questions, please contact Kena Zheng (kena.zheng(at)hhu.de).

For the organising team: Prof. Oles Andriychuk, Prof. Rupprecht Podszun, Dr. Anush Ganesh, Dr. Kena Zheng, Dr. Pavlína Hubková, Sarah Hinck, Dr. Jasper van den Boom and Dr. Tristan Rohner.

We are pleased to announce the Second Annual Conference on Fairness in Digital Markets and Artificial Intelligence (FIDMA 2026), entitled “Synthetic Imaginaries of Digital Fairness”, to be held on 18 March 2026 at Lund University, Sweden.

Following the success of the first edition, the FIDMA Network (European Researcher Network on Fairness in Digital Markets and Artificial Intelligence) invites paper submissions exploring fairness in digital markets, algorithmic systems, and AI regulation. The conference aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from law, economics, and policy to examine fairness as a guiding principle in the governance of AI-driven economies and digital regulation.

We particularly welcome contributions that engage with fairness as both a normative and empirical concept — encouraging synthetic imaginaries that combine theoretical, data-driven, and interdisciplinary approaches.

Date: 18th March 2026

Venue: Pufendorf Hall, Faculty of Law, Lund University, Sweden and Online (Zoom)

Keynote Speakers:

Prof. Jörgen Hettne, Judge at General Court of the European Union (TBC)
Prof. Dr. Teresa Rodríguez de las Heras Ballell, Full Professor of Commercial Law at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, President of the European Law Institute and Director of the Chair AI: Foundations & Frontiers

Topics of interest include:

1) Foundational Questions

• Fair Digital Markets: Cross-Disciplinary Dialogues
• Ideology in the Public Discourse about Digital Fairness
• Transparency, Accountability and Fairness in Automated Decision-Making
• Transparency, Accountability and Fairness in Online Services
• Comparative Perspectives from Law, Economics, Political Economy and More

2) Policy Priorities

• Fundamental Rights in the Digital Age
• Geopolitical Tensions Regarding Regulation of AI and Digital Markets
• Digital Sovereignty
• Dark Patterns

3) Specific Issues

• Fairness in the Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, and AI Act
• Fairness and Standardization in AI and Digital Regulation
• Fairness and Compliance: Bridging Ethics, Governance, and Enforcement
• Fair Algorithmic Pricing
• Transparent and FRAND Terms in Digital Markets

Registration: Please register using this link: https://www.aclu.lu.se/webform/fidma_synthetic_imaginaries_of_d

Questions? Please contact aclu@jur.lu.se

With best regards,
The Organising Committee
Behrang Kianzad (Institute for Global Political Studies, Malmö University),
Emilia Mišćenić (Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka), Fabrizio Esposito (NOVA School of Law, Universidade Nova de Lisboa), Johan Axhamn (Department of Business Law, Lund University School of Economics and Management), Nada-Ina Pauer (Max Planck Institute, Munich)

Fika-to-fika workshop in Lund and online 1 October 2025.

Following on from the successful workshops on Regulating High Risk AI in the EU (2023), and Compliance and Enforcement (2024), AI Lund’s fika-to-fika workshops* returns to the AI Act with a focus on legal aspects related to “transparency”.

The EU AI Act (Regulation (EU) 2024/1689) marks a groundbreaking shift in AI regulation, laying the foundation for a potential global standard in AI governance, risk management, and transparency. A key pillar of the Act is data transparency, i.e., the ability to understand and audit training data, algorithmic processes and AI output.

For example, the Act establishes the following obligations:

• During AI training (machine learning): Ensuring high-quality, unbiased, and representative training datasets.
• Inside the black box: Documenting and monitoring requirements related to algorithmic transparency, ensuring interpretability and traceability.
• AI output: Enabling human oversight, contestability, and post-market monitoring to mitigate risks and ensure accountability.

The AI Act also introduces transparency requirements to ensure that users are informed when interacting with an AI system. For example, AI systems generating synthetic content (such as deepfakes) must clearly label their outputs as artificially generated. Furthermore, providers of general-purpose AI models must meet specific disclosure obligations, including transparency regarding copyrighted content used for training models.

At the same time, questions remain about how the transparency obligations in the AI Act interact with other legal frameworks, including:

• Fundamental rights under the EU Charter
• Copyright protection for content used as training data in AI development
• Trade secret protection for training data and AI system operations
• Obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) regarding personal data protection
• Competition law restrictions on data access and potential abuse

Against this backdrop, this workshop—featuring leading experts, policymakers, and industry professionals—will explore how these requirements translate into real-world AI compliance strategies and what challenges remain in opening the black box while preserving innovation and competitiveness.

When: 1 October 2025.

Where:

• Stadshallen (Lund City Hall, Lund, Sweden): 9.00 to 15.30 CET
• Online: 9.25 to 12.00 and 13.00 to 15.15 CET

Spoken language: English

Programme
09.00 Registration open
09.25 Online meeting open
Online host: TBA

09.30 Presentations & Panels

Initial overview of Transparency in AI Systems
Stefan Larsson, Technology and Society, Lund University

Invited talk: Mapping competition concerns along the generative AI value chain
Kalpana Tyagi, International Law, Maastricht University

Copy right and Machine Learning
Johan Axhamn, Business Law, Lund University

TBA
Sebastian Schwemer, Law and Governance, Oslo Business School

—Short break—

Panel 1: Focus Transparency in Data Input
Moderator: Johan Axhamn, Business Law, Lund University
Panelists: TBA

Transparency in the GDPR and the AI Act – right to explanation of individual decision-making
Jonas Ledendal, Business Law, Lund University and Hajo Michael Holtz, Department of Law, Uppsala Universitet

Transparency as Fairness and Fairness as Transparency
Behrang Kianzad, Institute for Global Political Studies, Malmö University

When is an AI system transparent? Legal and non-legal meanings of AI transparency and their relation to Trustworthy AI
Kasia Söderlund, Technology and Society, Lund University

12.00 Lunch break
13.05 Online meeting opens
13.10 Presentations and Panels

Panel 2 Focus Transparency in AI Systems
Moderator: Behrang Kianzad, Institute for Global Political Studies, Malmö University
Panelists: TBA

Transparent but incomprehensible
Jacob Dexe, IAB

TBA
Ana Nordberg, Law, Lund University

The Logics of Transparency in the AI Act
Ida Koivisto, Law, University of Helsinki

—Short break—

Panel 3 focus Transparency in AI Output
Moderator: Jonas Ledendal, Business Law, Lund University
Panelists:
Janne Elvelid, Head of Public Policy Sweden and Finland, Facebook and TBA

TBA
Katja de Vries, Law, Uppsala University

Final words
Stefan Larsson, Technology and Society, Lund University

15.15 Coffee & mingle

Event Information

The Max Planck European Law Group invites abstract submissions for the Fourth Max Planck Conference for Early Career European Scholars on 4 and 5 September 2025 in Munich. The conference will bring together researchers interested in European law and policy for an exchange of ideas on longstanding and developing issues of fairness as a guiding principle of European law.

Fairness is increasingly invoked not only by the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights, but also in various European legislative initiatives. Today, references to this versatile principle can be found in diverse areas of European law: the rules on free movement, equality law, collective bargaining, competition law, asylum law, IP law, sports law, tax law and the regulation of digital platforms, to name a few. Fairness has become an overarching theme. While its specific functions vary across these different fields, it generally serves to recognize and balance competing interests of autonomous actors. As such, European legal scholarship strives for a holistic understanding of fairness in European law.

At the same time, the concept of fairness is subject to constant socio-economic change. While this contributes to contouring it as a guiding principle in European law, it also poses challenges in terms of legal certainty and predictability. For example, the Digital Markets Act refers to the creation of “contestable and fair markets”, the Data Governance Act to the requirement of “fair data access”, the Data Act to “fair access to and use of data” and the AI Act to the “fair use of artificial intelligence”. Further, several landmark CJEU judgments on European competition and internal market law underscore the importance of fairness as a legal principle. For instance, sports federations that simultaneously act as organizers and regulators are required to establish “transparent, fair, and nondiscriminatory” conditions in their rulebooks. Similarly, EU IP law and competition law often requires FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensing. In the context of tax law, fairness remains a critical issue, especially when addressing the distribution of tax burdens across different socio-economic groups and the allocation of taxing rights between Member States.

Due to the open-endedness of fairness as a concept, the planned conference aims to identify overarching metrics for its application in the European legal and economic order. In this way, the conference will provide a venue to discuss methodological questions of pertinent case law and the diversity of approaches to understanding fairness. The conference will concentrate on European Union law, but will also be open to approaches originating from the ECHR and, in a comparative perspective, from the legal orders of the Member States.

Abstract Submission

The conference is addressed to Assistant Professors, Postdocs, PhD Candidates, advanced students with academic aspirations, and early career professionals (within 5 years after commencing a professional activity). The call is open to all such researchers, including, but not limited to, affiliates of Max Planck Institutes. The conference language is English. Co-authorship is allowed. We invite to submit (1) an anonymised abstract of no more than 500 words and (2) a short CV, both in separate PDF documents, to europe@law.mpg.de by 1 April 2025. We aim to communicate selections by May 2025.

Selected participants are expected to send a draft paper due on 1 September 2025. Reimbursement of travel costs is conditional on the submission of draft papers. We have partnered with European Law Open to provide for a publication possibility, subject to a successful review process. Some funding will be available to cover the costs of travel and accommodation (max. 2 nights), with the total amount of funding per participant to be announced after
the selection process.

Organisers: The Max Planck European Law Group

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