On 6 November, our founder, Mitchel Volkering, had the privilege of joining fellow innovators plus interesting policymakers in Brussels for ACT | The App Association’s event, “EU Digital Policy at a Turning Point.”
“For a founder building a tech company in Europe, being invited to speak alongside officials from the European Commission, advisors from the European Parliament, and leading policy experts was more than an honour. It was a rare chance to help bridge the gap between regulatory ambition and startup reality, a gap that grows wider every time a new law that doesn’t properly consider the impact on EU SMEs lands on our desks.” – Mitchel Volkering
A Gathering of Digital (Policy) Leaders
The event took place at the L42 Business Center on Rue de la Loi, right in the heart of the EU quarter. ACT | The App Association brought together a remarkable cross-section of Europe’s digital ecosystem:
- Moderators
- Maria Goikoetxea Gomez de Segura, EU Policy Manager at ACT, who represents small and medium-sized app developers in key digital policy debates.
- Mike Sax, Founder and Chairperson of ACT and founder of Wellbeyond, who also represents small and medium-sized app developers in key digital policy debates and helped bring a grounded entrepreneurial lens to the whole discussion.
- Opening keynote
- Antonina Cipollone, Head of Unit for Better Regulation and Simplification at the European Commission, set the tone by highlighting how the EU’s simplification agenda aims to support startups and SMEs through smarter, more agile regulation.
- First panel – Opportunities and challenges around current EU regulations
This session unpacked how regulations like the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the AI Act are reshaping Europe’s digital ecosystem, and what that means in practice for innovators and businesses trying to scale.
- Second panel – Designing the next phase of Europe’s digital framework
Our mission: explore how Europe can design the next generation of digital rules so that they protect consumers and ensure fair competition without quietly crushing the innovators who drive our digital future.
- Closing remarks
- MEP Brando Benifei (S&D, Italy), former co-Rapporteur for the AI Act and now Coordinator in the Committee on International Trade, wrapped up the day with a parliamentary perspective on how smart, forward-looking regulation can strengthen Europe’s competitiveness on the global stage.
- Mike Sax closed from ACT’s side, tying everything back to the lived experience of SMEs and app developers.
It was one of those rare days where people who write the rules and people who live with the rules shared the same room and stayed long into the evening to keep talking.
Our input on Panel: Bringing SME Reality to the Table
In the second panel, “Designing the next phase of Europe’s digital framework,” our central question was simple but crucial:
How can Europe create regulations that uphold our values and allow startups and SMEs to breathe, build, and scale?
From the SME side, our founder was straight to the point and completely honest.
When he was asked how vaic.at keeps up with regulation at vaic.at, he didn’t pretend we had it all under control. Mitchel said plainly:
“We’re not handling it well. We’re hiring consultants, spending engineering hours, and losing money that should’ve gone to the engineers themselves. Every time something like GDPR or the DMA drops, it bulldozes us.”
That line later made it into ACT’s live coverage of the event, because it captures what many founders feel but don’t always get the chance to say in front of policymakers.
The Compliance Burden: A Reality Check for SMEs
This isn’t about being anti-regulation. If you build products that touch people’s lives, you want strong rules around privacy, security, and fair competition. GDPR, the DMA, the AI Act… the original core ideas behind these laws are important. But their recent interpretation, provisions and enforcement are a problem.
The problem is how these rules land in real life.
For large platforms:
- A new regulation is an additional workstream.
- They have dedicated legal, privacy, and compliance teams.
- They can better absorb the cost of uncertainty, audits, and iteration.
*A big caveat here for us SMEs is that whilst larger platforms might be able to absorb the impact, laws like the DMA still results in less privacy focussed innovation and delayed roll outs of new technology we can use to build our services.
For small teams like ours:
- Every new law triggers another round of paperwork instead of progress.
- We don’t have in-house regulatory affairs experts, hiring consultants is costly.
- Engineering time gets diverted from building features for users to deciphering legal obligations and adjusting infrastructure.
The result is that the same law feels very different depending on your size. On paper, regulations may claim to be “platform neutral”; in practice, they can be structurally biased against SMEs simply because of the fixed compliance overhead.
Our founder argued that if Europe wants its digital strategy to succeed, this asymmetry has to be acknowledged and addressed head-on.
“I think we need an immediate pause on incredibly overstepping legislation like the DMA, it’s blocking us from innovating.” – Mitchel Volkering
Finding Common Ground
What encouraged me in Brussels was that this wasn’t a one-way feedback session. There was genuine engagement from the policymakers in the room.
- Branislav Turcina brought in the perspective of innovation policy and access to finance, underlining that regulation and funding need to work together if we want startups to scale in Europe, not leave it.
- Rebekka Porath highlighted how intellectual property and standards frameworks can either unlock growth for young companies – or create barriers when licensing and standard-essential patents are too complex or opaque.
We also touched on the huge blocker the Digital Markets Act has become, the withdrawal of the SEP Regulation and ongoing debates around a potential “28th regime”, a more unified framework that could simplify how digital rules apply across the EU single market. The message we heard was clear: policymakers are aware that complexity is becoming a competitiveness issue, and there is an appetite to course-correct.
The Power of Community: Why ACT Matters
One lighter (but very real) moment during the panel was when I gave a shout-out to the ACT newsletter and great team of experts as one of the few ways the team can meaningfully keep up with everything happening in Brussels.
For a small company, it’s nearly impossible to track every legislative file, delegated act, and implementation guideline on our own. ACT helps translate this maze into something a startup can actually act on – and just as importantly, gives us a channel to send feedback back into the policy process.
Being part of ACT | The App Association has been invaluable. They:
- create spaces like this event where startups sit at the same table as regulators,
- ensure SME perspectives are heard early instead of as an afterthought, and
- help build a community of founders who share similar challenges across different countries and markets. Going on the hunt for solutions together.
Without that bridge, the Brussels conversation would risk becoming a closed loop between institutions and large incumbents.
Why This Matters for vaic.at – and for Europe
At vaic.at, we build privacy-first tools to help people understand and navigate talent mobility, education mobility, and innovation mobility across the EU.
To do that responsibly and sustainably, we depend on:
- Clear, interoperable rules that don’t fragment the single market.
- Strong privacy and security frameworks that we can build into our products by design.
- Regulation that scales with company size, so a five-person startup isn’t treated like a global tech giant.
When regulation is well-designed and implemented with SMEs in mind, it becomes an enabler: it sets guardrails, builds trust with users, and creates a level playing field.
When it isn’t, it becomes a quiet exit signal: delayed features, avoid certain markets, or decide that building in Europe simply isn’t worth the risk and overhead.
That’s the bigger picture. Europe is at a crossroads. We can:
- build a regulatory model that protects citizens and unleashes innovation, or
- create an environment where compliance costs slowly drive startups to other regions.
Looking Ahead
As MEP Benifei noted, smart regulation can strengthen Europe’s digital edge, but only if it is designed with startups, not merely for them.
So here’s the takeaway Mitchel noted:
- To fellow founders and SMEs: Don’t stay on the sidelines. Join organisations like ACT, respond to consultations, and when you get the chance to sit on a panel, speak honestly about your challenges. Your lived experience is exactly what policymakers need to hear.
- To policymakers and regulators: Keep inviting us into the room early. Treat implementation and proportionality as seriously as legislative ambition. Remember that every hour a small team spends on compliance is an hour not spent on building the next great European product.
The work continues, but if Brussels showed anything, it’s that when we break through the bubble and bring policy and practice together, we can design a digital framework where innovation thrives and startups scale.
At vaic.at, we’re committed to staying part of that conversation and to building the kind of products that prove Europe can be both trusted and competitive in the digital age.
A Thank You – and a Call to Keep Talking
This event wouldn’t have been possible without the tireless work of the ACT team: Maria, Giulia, Ivy, Jack and Mike, who kept the discussions focused and accessible. Also a big thanks to the speakers!
Equally important was everyone who came to hear our talks in the room at L42: startup founders, policy professionals, ecosystem builders, and industry representatives who stayed well into the networking reception to keep the conversation going. The energy in that room is exactly what Europe needs more of.
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