Dear Readers,

Welcome to ESC's first newsletter after our official registration in May 2023.

​We are happy to be able to send you regular news from our news desk, and if you know of anybody who would like to receive news from ESC then please share.

ESC was formally established in May 2023, and our official birthday is May 4, 2023. We are proud to be able to count no less than 24 founding member organisations from around Europe, and we hope many more organisations will join. We have had a founding general assembly and we published the report from the assembly on our webpage. If you want to see our statutes, you will find them here.

Silence? Behind the scenes we have been very busy!

In order to be an official NGO we need to be properly registered. Our members in The Netherlands have done a fantastic job over the summer of getting all the proper documents in place and signed, and we are now officially registered in Belgium with the Court District of Brussels as a so-called VZW – a non profit organisation. A big thank you to the hard working members who managed to do this! They are also in the process of getting a bank account for ESC, so hopefully we can soon start collecting membership fees and donations.

Website

Another big task was building a website. This is still in progress and more info will keep flowing in. Visit our website here: www.esc-info.eu

Next General Assembly

ESC plans to have an extraordinary General Assembly on October 26. It will be an online meeting via Zoom starting at 19.00 (7 p.m. CET.)

On the agenda is a presentation of some of the ESC working groups with their achievements and also other issues. All members will soon receive the detailed agenda, but please add the time and date to your calendar already now.

In June ESC members were invited to a White Zone event in Rièzes in the south of Belgium hosted by David and Guy from the organizations Mavieenmodeavion and Un lieu de vie pour EHS ASBL.

We presented ESC to the crowd, and the following day over 60 people from European organisations worked together exchanging ideas and creating working groups. It was great to see all the enthusiasm of the members about the cooperation and the ensuing opportunities for ESC.

Please read more about the event in our article
https://esc-info.eu/en/europeans-for-safe-connections-attending-a-gathering-in-belgium/

As a result of the many input from our members, ESC now have these working groups actively working with the objectives of ESC:

• Political/Law
• Education
• White zone
• Health
• Press
• Fund raising
• Technical Solutions

​Are we missing a working group?

Maybe we need another working group in your opinion. If you want, you are very welcome to propose working groups with other topics. For a working group to be established there must be at least 3 active members, so find some people with the same interests as you and let's hear from you.
Please write to secretary email: charlotte.esc@proton.me

All members are invited!
If you are not a member yet we invite you to become one.

The European Commission recognizes our Alert

In a reply dated September 1, 2023 the European Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, confirmed the European Commission’s position that it is the exclusive responsibility of member states and their surveillance authorities to declare non-compliant cell phones and remove them from the EU market.

This response confirms the action taken by NGO PhonegateAlert and partner Europeans for Safe Connections (ESC). For Dr.Marc Arazi, who co-founded the NGOPhonegate Aler tin 2018:

“The European Commission’s response is a recognition for the work accomplished by our NGO. Yet we will only be truly satisfied when a transparent European policy is put in place to effectively protect the health of the hundreds of millions of users of cell phones, tablets, smartwatches, toys and other connected objects. We look forward to an early meeting with Thierry Breton to discuss particular ways of action.“

Read the Press Release.

iPhone 12 banned from sale in France

Another victory. September 12, 2023, the French National Frequencies Agency (ANFR) announced the provisional withdrawal of the iPhone 12 for exceeding the regulatory SAR level for members. All distributors are therefore obliged to withdraw it from their points of sale.

Read more here

Report on Global Technology in Education

ESC has published a review on this report by UNESCO on our website. The report examines educational results involving technology from all around the world, and its conclusions are nuanced and trend breaking. The report is rather critical and highlights a good degree of scepticism towards ICT and AI in education. In the light of the ever increasing dependency in our young ones on digital media, the ESC welcomes this report.

Link to original report

GIA – Latest Draconian Law Proposal from the EU about 5G

The full name: Gigabit Infrastructure Act

The plan is to remove barriers for building the infrastructure for 5G, so rolling-out goes fast and smooth without any consideration for health or environmental issues, and the goal is that we all get cheaper and faster access to the Internet. The law will remove the responsibility from local authorities in the approval processes for masts and antennas in all EU.

We need to influence the process. But the time is limited since the EP (European Parliament) will discuss it, and ITRE (the responsible committee within the EP) will vote on 19 September 2023.

ESC’s Political/Law working group is working full speed to influence the different levels of competence in the EU. They are preparing letters and arguments for you so you will be able to approach your MEPs and local politicians. Stay tuned – members will soon receive a "GIA Politician Pack" with lots of info in your in-box.

Read more about GIA here

Thank you for reading this newsletter. Please share widely.

Europeans for Safe Connections