EDRi’s 2025 in review: we resisted, we persisted

New Commissioners, new priorities

The new college of European Commissioners took office in December 2024, and from early 2025, it became apparent that the political winds had shifted. Despite having spent the previous term building up a strong digital policy framework, the new and sweeping deregulation agenda has posed an existential threat to the protection of digital rights, as well as a wide range of other human rights and social protections in other fields.

This has emerged against a backdrop of foreign governments, such as the US, increasingly attacking the EU’s digital rulebook, as well as shockingly targeting those that advocate for its enforcement.

In response, EDRi joined forces with almost five hundred other civil society groups across a wide range of issues (from workers’ rights to the environment and much more) to sound the alarm against the deregulation agenda and to call on lawmakers to put people front and center. In October , we convened a 2-day meeting of this coalition, with over 100 people from across Europe gathering to express solidarity, build narratives, and explore strategies to collectively contest the deregulation agenda. On November 19, the day that the notorious Digital Omnibus was published, we joined forces with campaign groups to flood Brussels with billboards calling on the EU to fight for people, not for Big Tech.

Upholding the EU’s vital digital rulebook

We have also remained firmly committed to our work on the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA), recognising that these laws strike an important balance between tackling illegal content online, while upholding free expression, and enforcing the conditions for fair digital competition. In the autumn, we met with the EU’s Executive Vice-President Virkkunen to express how important these laws are for protecting people across the bloc, as well as to emphasise our concerns about EU laws and programmes threatening encryption.

Along with several of our members and partners, throughout the year we lodged complaints against X’s abuse of people’s personal data, Meta’s toxic profiling, and X’s breach of its obligations to Trusted Flaggers. Putting our money where our mouth is, we decided to leave X in January 2025 as the platform had become too toxic and to redouble our commitment to the Fediverse, for example through our Mastodon account.

Another highlight for the year, showing that change is possible, was the significant fine that the European Commission levied against X – proving that the EU’s tech regulations have the power to protect people from digital harms and redress imbalances of power against the tech giants.

Policy progress against disproportionate state surveillance

Elsewhere, we have persisted with our core mission to uphold fundamental rights in the digital age across European laws and policies. Another highlight from the year was the June publication of our position on spyware, calling for a principled ban against this deeply-intrusive and disproportionate tool. Thanks to the advocacy of the EDRi network, as well as other NGOs and a group of lawmakers, the topic remains firmly on the agenda of European leaders.

Other highlights include our continued advocacy to protect encryption and rule out mass surveillance in the CSA Regulation (aka ‘chat control’) which paid off in November with the EU Council taking a formal position in line with these demands; a partnership with our members ECNL and HCLU and partner Liberties to contest the use of AI-charged facial recognition to persecute LGBTQI+ communities in Hungary and which has resulted in a response from the European Commission; and the April launch of our exciting Civic Journalism Coalition (along with ECNL and Lighthouse Reports), a project that has successfully built bridges between investigative journalism and digital rights policy; and building out our work at the intersection of digital rights and environmental justice.

Despite little political support, we have also continued tireless advocacy – including jointly with the ProtectNotSurveil coalition – against the seemingly exponential desire for expansion of Europol and Frontex despite systematic breaches of data protection and other fundamental rights.

Privacy Camp

As part of our mission to keep these topics, and many other important rights and justice issues, high on decision-makers’ agendas, we hosted two large public events in 2025. In May, in partnership with LSTS, VUB and Privacy Salon, we welcomed over 70 people to the Digital Rights Lounge powered by Privacy Camp for an afternoon of interrogating key data protection issues relating to the GDPR, exploring methods of resistance to digital authoritarianism, and dissecting the EU’s deregulation agenda.

In September, also along with LSTS, VUB and Privacy Salon, we held our landmark Privacy Camp conference, with a record number of attendees joining to explore the theme Resilience and Resistance in Times of Deregulation and Authoritarianism. Attendees were able to listen to and participate in a rich selection of panels, workshops and breakouts exploring everything from state surveillance issues and the rise of militarisation and securitisation in Europe, to contesting spyware, protecting the GDPR, and organising for digital justice.

An even stronger EDRi network

We have also taken several exciting steps on the organisational development front. First, we launched EDRi’s pilot re-granting mechanism. Led by a committee made of members representatives and an external philanthropy expert, and thanks to the support of the Civitates and Mercator Foundation, we supported 14 of our members with small grants ranging from €5,000 to €15,000. The grants were used to meet a variety of urgent needs, ranging from responding to urgent advocacy opportunities, to investing in building organisational resilience, holding strategic workshops and boosting internal capacity. In 2026, we will continue to evaluate the impact of this pilot and investigate other mechanisms to help members weather external threats or loss of funding.

In July, we hosted our first community gathering event, bringing together 15 digital rights activists from our community in Bologna to explore together how to build spaces of trust and collective resilience in times of crisis. The experiment left us all recharged and inspired to continue creating and nurturing spaces of connection and care for our growing community. In 2025 the network welcomed 3 new members: Privacy Network and Osservatorio Nessuno in Italy, and Zasto Ne in Bosnia.

2025 was, finally, a year of big internal change for EDRi. With extreme gratitude, we said goodbye to our Executive Director Claire Fernandez, and in December, excitedly welcomed our new Executive Director, Amber Sinha. We were further delighted to bring in three colleagues: Chiara Casati in the Communications and Campaigns team, Simeon de Brouwer in the Policy team, and Federica Luciolli in the Fundraising and Finance team. With these hires, our team is back at full capacity and well-equipped for the inevitable challenges that lie ahead in 2026!