About CPDP Conferences

CPDP is a non-profit platform originally founded in 2007 by research groups from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Université de Namur and Tilburg University. The platform was joined in the following years by the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique and the Fraunhofer Institut für System und Innovationsforschung and has now grown into a platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond. As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic and technological development in privacy and data protection. Within an atmosphere of independence and mutual respect, CPDP gathers academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels, offering them an arena to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends. This unique multidisciplinary formula has served to make CPDP one of the leading data protection and privacy conferences in Europe and around the world.
In 2024, CPDP added 'ai' to its acronyms, dealing with Computer, Privacy, Data Protection and Artificial Intelligence. This same year, we started organising Data Protection Day in collaboration with institutional partners,  EDPS and CoE. 

CPDP is a conference about privacy and data protection. It offers a forum where different voices are heard and where positions are compared debated, approached or differentiated.

CPDP is a non-profit platform originally founded in 2007 by research groups from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Université de Namur and Tilburg University. The platform was joined in the following years by the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en Automatique and the Fraunhofer Institut für System und Innovationsforschung and has now after a decade grown into a platform carried by 20 academic centers of excellence from the EU, the US and beyond. As a world-leading multidisciplinary conference CPDP offers the cutting edge in legal, regulatory, academic and technological development in privacy and data protection. Within an atmosphere of independence and mutual respect, CPDP gathers academics, lawyers, practitioners, policy-makers, industry and civil society from all over the world in Brussels, offering them an arena to exchange ideas and discuss the latest emerging issues and trends. This unique multidisciplinary formula has served to make CPDP one of the leading data protection and privacy conferences in Europe and around the world.

CPDP has a variety of contributing formats, which translate into partners, sponsors and supporters. Partners organise panels and pay a panel contribution to compensate for the fact that panellists do not have to pay registration fee. There are two types of partners: (1) ‘Conference Partners’ is a format developed for academic centres of excellence that organise a panel at CPDP and are also involved in scientific activities such as reviewing the call for papers; (2) ‘Event Partners’ is a format for other public and private institutions and research projects that organise panels at CPDP; Sponsors contribute a certain sum of money in exchange for visibility. Some sponsors are also involved in organising panels others only have one or more speakers at the conference. There are three main levels of sponsorship: ‘Platinum, Premier and Event Sponsors’; Finally ‘Moral Supporters’ and ‘Media Supporters’ do not contribute financially or organise panels but provide moral support and/or press coverage to the conference.

This note clarifies how CPDP looks at the role of funding and makes use of funding. These are the CPDP criteria regarding funding:
1. CPDP accepts sponsorship from all entities, who wish to endorse the objectives of the conference, however, the organizers reserve the right to decline sponsorship offered by sponsors whose main activities are incompatible with the spirit and aims of the conference or have the effect that certain stakeholders do not want to be involved in the conference anymore.
2. Sponsorship of CPDP does not give public or private institutions any influence over the entire programme of CPDP. Suggestions and ideas are considered by the programme committee, which makes the final decision. Panels that are set up by partners are identified as such in the programme. From 2016 on the name of individual speakers who receive sponsoring, and the identity of the sponsor, who organise panels will also be made publicly available. A quality check in terms of multidisciplinarity, originality, geographical spread and gender equality is carried out by the programming committee. These requirements are also communicated to panel organisers beforehand. Although the programming committee is open to suggestions of the partner or sponsor the committee adds a member of the CPDP scientific committee or a person with specific expertise in the subject matter of the panel to each panel (apart from the panels organised by conference partners) either as a moderator or chair. All responsibility for unbalanced panels is for the programming committee who is accountable to the CPDP scientific committee.

Everyone participating in CPDP is expected to abide by the following code of conduct. This includes all conference attendees, speakers, staff and volunteers. CPDP is committed to providing a welcoming and harassment-free environment for everyone, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, physical appearances, or beliefs (or lack thereof).  

Harassment and unacceptable behavior include but are not limited to: deliberate intimidation, stalking, inappropriate physical contact and unwelcome sexual attention, the use of derogatory or discriminatory language, gestures or actions, racism, sexism, or any other targeted comments which may cause personal offense to another CPDP participant either in-person at the conference or through social media channels.