In a presentation to BELTUG, Belgium’s largest independent group of ICT managers, Facebook’s head of its Brussels office, Erika Mann, a former member of European Parliament and board member of ICANN, talked about her role at the social networking behemoth and the work she does out of Europe’s capital city.

Mann is no stranger to the world of international lobbying – she was formerly an executive vice president at Computer & Communications Industry Association.

As transcribed by Data News (article in Dutch), Mann said she and one other team member make up the entire staff at Facebook’s Belgian office today, but that the company is looking to fill 2 more positions (3 according to Facebook’s Careers page), including a Public Policy Manager EU and Administrative Assistant.

The main activity of the Brussels office is, unsurprisingly, building and maintaining relationships with a variety of European institutions. That includes lobbying work and setting up conversations about privacy and data security issues.

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg recently subtly criticized Europe as the European Commission prepares to release a draft of a strict data privacy regulation that stands to affect companies like the social networking giant.

Facebook reportedly spent $1.35 million on lobbying in the U.S. in 2011.

At the event, Mann said that Facebook doesn’t censor content as a policy but needs to have ‘moral and ethical standards’ in place, considering its social network is now host to roughly 850 million active users (4.6 million in Belgium), 80% of which are said to live outside of North America.

Mann cited a recent Deloitte study that said Facebook brings Europe about 15.3 billion euros in ‘business value’, as well over 230,000 indirect jobs.

She thinks companies like Facebook couldn’t have come out of Europe because startups need to make significantly more investments to reach critical mass in these parts, although she’s aware of Spotify and Skype’s European roots.

Also read:

Facebook snags former Boehner aide to boost Congressional lobbying

Facebook is killing local social networks around the world

Facebook reveals it has 58M mobile-only users per month…its post-PC world is still emerging

The European Commission is doing its best to embed itself further in the European startup and investor ecosystem, and gearing up to make its second Digital Agenda Assembly a success (we’ll be there, by the way).

In partnership with pan-European investor group Rainmaking, the EC is also organizing a startup competition dubbed Tech All Stars, which aims to identify 12 promising European startups and get them in front of EU funding sources, a number of successful entrepreneurs and pundits, as well as potential investors.

Tech All Stars will select 10 of the best Euro startups that ‘graduated’ from business incubators, accelerators and Web camps, and another two ‘wildcards’ (that would be startups that haven’t necessarily completed an accelerator program or similar).

Startups can apply now and need to fit three criteria: they have to be registered within the European Union (duh), be less than 3 years old and raised raised less than 1 million euros in outside capital.

The application process will close on May 15th, and the twelve startups will be selected in early June 2012.

On the Tech All Stars advisory board, you’ll find people like PriceMinister CEO Pierre Kosciusko Morizet, Seedcamp’s Reshma Sohoni, Startup Bootcamp MD Alex Farcet, Springboard’s Jon Bradford and Wayra Europe’s Simon Devonshire.

The organization is trying to convince sponsors to offer winning startups cash prizes, but in any case, the top three startups will win an exclusive invite to Founders Forum to pitch at its high-profile talent track (past Founders Forum participants include Mark Zuckerberg and Richard Branson).

Tech All Stars is organized by the European Commission’s Information Society and Media department and will be held in June 20th – 21st 2012 in London. The winner will participate in an event on June 22nd in Brussels and receive an award from EC Vice President Neelie Kroes.

The complex mess of patent-related battles in the mobile industry has taken another twist. It’s emerged that Apple has filed a formal antitrust complaint against Motorola Mobility to the European Commission.

Apple’s complaint emerged in Motorola Mobility’s latest annual report, filed yesterday. As FOSS Patents notes, the document reveals that the company has only just been informed of the complaint:

“On February 17, 2012, the Company received a letter from the European Commission, Competition Directorate-General, (the ‘Commission’) notifying it that the Commission has received a complaint against Motorola Mobility, Inc. (‘MMI’) by Apple, Inc. (‘Apple’) regarding the enforcement of MMI’s standards-essential patents against Apple allegedly in breach of MMI’s FRAND commitments. Apple’s complaint seeks the Commission’s intervention with respect to standards-essential patents.”

The complaint relates to Motorola Mobility’s handling of patents that it holds which are classified as requiring licensing to others on ’fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory‘ (FRAND) terms. This is designed to ensure that companies do not use patents to monopolise a sector by offering unreasonable licensing terms.

Apple believes Motorola is in breach of this commitment, something also evident in its recently initiated lawsuit in the US.

A Motorola Mobility spokesperson has told Bloomberg Businessweek that the company “has a long-standing practice of licensing our patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms and we offered those to Apple,” adding that the two companies have been in licensing talks since 2007.

Earlier this week, the European Commission approved Google’s acquisition of Motorola Mobility. However, it expressed concerns over Motorola’s handling of patent licensing. FOSS Patents noted earlier in the week that such concerns could not be dealt with as part of a mergers and acquisitions procedure.

With Samsung already under investigation by the European Commission for its approach to licensing patents, it seems likely that Apple’s complaint will be taken forward into a formal probe.

Meanwhile, as noted by Slashgear, Motorola also notes that it sees one potential threat this year being Nokia entering the tablet market. Back in December 2011, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said that Nokia “does not have an exact plan” with regard to tablets, but that it was “studying the markets carefully.” If a Nokia tablet emerged that was anything near as nice as these fan-made renders, Motorola would definitely have cause for concern.