Last week, eBay Inc. hosted a panel on how to foster both innovative businesses and policy for the EU’s Single Market. The occasion was the European Liberals and Democrat’s Party Council Meeting in Vienna, and Hanne Melin of the eBay Inc. Public Policy Lab was one of the panelists.

The panel discussion, co-hosted by eBay Inc. and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA), was held against the backdrop of the upcoming European Parliament elections end of May. The ambition was to generate discussion among election candidates on the policymaker's role in supporting innovation and the importance of legislation that allows for appropriate responses to change and novelties.

Innovation will most often challenge existing practices and/or legislation. Two of the panelists described their experience of running up against tradition. Anissia Tcherniaeff, co-founder of Belgian ride-sharing app Djump, described the challenges her company is facing as it provides a ridesharing service which looks nothing like what taxi regulation expects and is viewed as a threat by the traditional taxi sector. Read her story on the Computer and Communications Industry Association site.

A slightly different situation was described by Oliver Prothmann, founder of Choice in eCommerce. He talked about the situation where there is in fact a relatively future-proof legal framework in place but neither the spirit nor the letter of the law is being upheld. Choice in eCommerce is an association created in reaction to the practice  by a growing number of brand owners and manufacturers of contractually restricting their authorized distributors from using online marketplaces as a retail channel. This runs counter to the 2010 EU competition rules, but retailers are not helped unless those rules are properly enforced and a strong signal is sent to the market that innovation in retail is not only a good thing but is protected. A step in that direction was taken on 28 May when the German competition authority issued a statement condemning ASICS's attempts to contractually restrict the positive force of the Internet and innovation.

Following these two examples of "innovation meets tradition", Hanne offered a couple of reflections on how the incoming Members of the European Parliament (MEP) can make room for innovation. Here, she challenged the incoming MEPs to modernize the traditional principle based regulatory model using 21st century data analytics and she urged them to take on a role of "sense makers" by putting change in its proper context. Read Hanne's intervention. 

James Waterworth, Vice-President of CCIA and moderator of the debate, engaged Maarten Smit, candidate of the Dutch liberals, and Stefan Windberger, candidate of the Austrian liberals in a discussion on policy approaches to encourage innovation. In a lively debate, both candidates expressed their strong support for updating outdated legislation where it fails to address the public policy objectives it was planned to serve.