On 6 July 2023, Patrick Penninckx, Head of the Information Society Department, addressed participants of the Liverpool Summer School on the Law of the Council of Europe “The Council of Europe: Resilience in Troubling Times”. In his presentation entitled “Rules for the digital age” he portrayed the strategic objectives of the Council of Europe after the Reykjavik Summit such as:

• strengthening the role of the Council of Europe in the evolving European multilateral architecture and in global governance;
• ensuring a leading role for the Council of Europe in developing standards in the digital era to safeguard human rights online and offline, including by finalising, as a priority, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on Artificial Intelligence;
• ensuring prominent role in international standard-setting on freedom of expression and related issues such as media freedom, and access to information and combatting hate speech and disinformation;
• deploing additional efforts to protect the environment, as well as to counter the impact of the triple planetary crisis of pollution, climate change and loss of biodiversity.

The Summer School organised on 3-14 July 2023 has received support from the Council of Europe, the School of Law and Social Justice of the University of Liverpool, the Full-Service International Law Firm Gibson Dunn and Professor Robert Spano.