The development of ever more powerful, miniaturised and affordable information and communications technologies (ICT) over the last 40 years has revolutionised the economy and changed society through innovation in products, services and business models, instantaneous access to vast amounts of content, and new forms of participatory governance. At the same time, these technologies result in the decline of established economic sectors and create vulnerabilities and challenges of societal, ethical or legal nature. The European Union is deploying policies and legislation to address challenges in the “information society” since the 1990’s and this has accelerated with the introduction of the Cybersecurity and Single Market Strategies in 2013 and 2015. The presentation will discuss some of the above challenges in terms of fundamental rights, security, safety or access to data, the dilemmas for the policy maker, and the EU responses in some of the areas. The domain is very broad, therefore the presentation will be a sketch of different strands of work rather than an in-depth discussion of any particular topic.