EU officers and nationwide politicians have championed “digital sovereignty” as an answer to on-line disinformation, cyber threats and the facility of non-European tech firms. Drawing on a brand new particular concern, Anke Obendiek, Gerda Falkner, Sebastian Heidebrecht and Timo Seidl spotlight how the time period is influencing coverage and political discourse throughout the EU.
As digitalisation has develop into a key concern within the EU, policymakers face the twin problem of fostering digital markets whereas concurrently regulating them. Rising considerations about disinformation, surveillance and the extreme market energy of US and Chinese language tech firms have prompted requires a distinctly “European method” to digital coverage.
Leaders corresponding to Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel and Ursula von der Leyen have emphasised the necessity to strengthen European values and enhance public management, distinguishing the EU’s ambitions from the US laissez-faire method and the strictly state-controlled system in China. Digital sovereignty has develop into the central tenet for this method.
Digital sovereignty describes the try to claim “management of the digital” on three layers: the bodily layer (sources, infrastructure, gadgets); the code layer (requirements, guidelines, design); and the knowledge layer (on-line content material, information). Nevertheless, regardless of widespread use amongst high-level officers, assume tanks and students, the time period is characterised by conceptual fuzziness and a scarcity of reflection on the relevance behind the excitement.
What does digital sovereignty imply on the coverage degree? And is its relevance common throughout concern areas? Now we have edited a brand new particular concern investigating these questions throughout 9 key areas of EU digital coverage. Our findings present complete coverage change, because the EU turns into more and more assertive. Nevertheless, the relevance of digital sovereignty in policy-related discourse varies relying on the problem space.
Complete change throughout digital coverage areas
The 9 areas of EU digital coverage we cowl are synthetic intelligence coverage, cloud coverage, competitors coverage, copyright coverage, digital finance regulation, exterior relations, industrial coverage, web content material regulation, and web standard-setting. Strikingly, our findings counsel that vital modifications towards extra management on the coverage degree have occurred in all however one space. None of those areas function a whole absence of the digital sovereignty discourse and coverage change.
Whether or not in copyright, synthetic intelligence, or digital finance, EU policymakers appear to have tightened their grip by adjusting fines, introducing new coverage devices or by altering the overarching path of insurance policies. For instance, the Digital Markets Act, which emerged as a compromise amongst competing claims throughout the Fee, represents a shift in the direction of a extra “dirigiste” EU competitors coverage. In the meantime, EU industrial coverage appears to be present process a “geo-dirigiste” flip, directing markets into strategic sectors. And within the realm of web requirements and protocols in addition to in synthetic intelligence, the EU’s imaginative and prescient for the longer term entails a rising assertiveness in influencing international processes.
However, strikingly, on a discursive degree, modifications are a lot much less uniform. There are at the very least 4 areas the place coverage change in the direction of digital sovereignty with out a corresponding discursive change will be noticed. An more and more essential safety discourse has prolonged public obligations in digital finance, broad public order considerations are driving regulatory motion in content material regulation, and through the contested reform of the Copyright Directive in 2019, politicians referred to “European values and tradition”. Nevertheless, there have been both few specific makes use of of digital sovereignty or the time period was “indistinctive” from different ideas, corresponding to in exterior relations.
Commerce-offs and strategic utilization
Contemplating the time period has been referred to in main speeches and strategic paperwork, the variation in the usage of digital sovereignty as a time period is shocking. Certainly, in some areas, digital sovereignty has develop into a politically useful device, serving as a “coalition magnet” that unites various actors behind a typical agenda or offering a “repertoire of concepts” for numerous actors, serving to to bridge competing pursuits.
Nevertheless, the usage of digital sovereignty will also be expensive. Some actors keep away from the time period as a result of associations with protectionism or interventionism. And in digital coverage particularly, the notion of sovereignty has lengthy been related to the potential for restrictions, censorship and undue state affect on the worldwide web, encouraging democratic actors to depend on different phrases in cyber diplomacy, exterior capability constructing or content material regulation. Furthermore, in relation to the EU’s AI technique, there are issues related to the over-ambitious and Eurocentric nature of the EU’s ambition to attain “AI sovereignty”.
In cloud coverage, country-specific ideological legacies and political constellations make the time period extra outstanding in Germany and France than within the Netherlands and Poland. In digital finance, long-standing authorized traditions imply there are few advantages from introducing a brand new time period, however it might be utilized by public authorities to justify strikes into new areas of regulation.
These variations replicate what we name particular ideational trade-offs in every coverage space: whether or not and the way actors use the language of digital sovereignty depends upon prices and advantages that differ throughout coverage (sub-)areas. Some actors can profit from the utilization of the digital sovereignty time period to construct coalitions or struggle opponent lobbying teams, whereas others want to keep away from showing over-interventionist and anti-liberal.
In abstract, our findings present that the discourse on digital sovereignty is not only empty rhetoric however an essential component in broader modifications to EU digital coverage. Whereas the time period itself could not at all times be the driving pressure, vital coverage modifications replicate the EU’s try to extend its management of the digital house.
For extra data, see the accompanying particular concern within the Journal of European Public Coverage, edited by Gerda Falkner, Sebastian Heidebrecht, Anke Obendiek and Timo Seidl.
Word: This text offers the views of the authors, not the place of EUROPP – European Politics and Coverage or the London Faculty of Economics. Featured picture credit score: © European Union, 2024
