Amid the European Union’s mounting scrutiny of Facebook Inc. and other tech giants, Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg will head to Brussels for a policy discussion with regulators.

The trip is scheduled for mid-February and will also see Zuckerberg participate in the Munich Security Conference attended by world leaders.

Facebook said in a statement that the CEO will “meet with European decision-makers in Brussels to discuss a framework for new rules and regulation for the internet.” The company didn’t detail exactly what will be discussed or who will be taking part besides Zuckerberg. 

The decision-makers with whom Zuckerberg will meet include may include EU executive vice president for digital affairs Margrethe Vestager. Vestager, who has hit U.S. tech giants with billions of dollars in fines over recent years, this month met with Alphabet Inc. Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and Microsoft Corp. President Brad Smith.

One topic that will likely come up in Zuckerberg’s meeting is the Digital Services Act currently being drawn up by the EU. Under the proposed law, tech giants such as Facebook would be held responsible for illegal content users upload to their platforms. The legislation would come on top of the landmark ruling issued by the bloc’s highest court in October, which gave judges from member states the authority to order that Facebook take down defamatory content globally.

A second policy development that may affect the social network is the EU’s forthcoming release of its artificial intelligence guidelines. The rules are set to be published in mid-February, likely within days of Zuckerberg’s trip to Brussels.

The meeting represents a change of course for the Facebook CEO, who has in the past been reluctant at times to appear before regulators outside the U.S. Zuckerberg last year declined an invite from Canadian lawmakers and Facebook earlier sent another executive in his place to an international panel on disinformation.

The EU’s fast-evolving regulatory landscape is just one of several challenges facing Facebook in the region. There’s also the preliminary probe that the European Commission, the EU’s executive branch, opened into Facebook and Alphabet’s handling of user data late last year. A number of national agencies including Italy’s competition authority are scrutinizing the social network as well.

Facebook has taken steps recently to better comply with regulatory expectations. Yesterday, the social network rolled out new settings that enable users to restrict how much data it collects about them from other services such as e-commerce websites. Also on Tuesday, Facebook shared details about the internal oversight board that it’s currently setting up.

Photo: Archive.gov