At least as early as the Digital Agenda for Europe, the European Commission has placed digital policy at the centre of its priorities, guided by the economic benefits of digitalisation. However, the focus has not remained only at an economic level, based on the legislation built upon the internal market competency. Instead, the focus has gradually evolved towards the shaping of the digital space with a regulatory framework rooted in the European value system for the purposes of creating a ‘European digital society’.

Based on this perceived evolution, the main hypothesis of this research is that digital policy has been caught between the rationalist choice and constructivist approaches focusing on injecting European values in the digital space, for instance. If the 2015 strategy focused on eliminating barriers in digital trade, the focus of the current Commission is not only to accelerate digital transformation, but also to work towards digital convergence. In this sense, this article explores evolving digital policies in the European Union, starting from the neofunctionalist logic of path dependency created by multiple crises, towards the Europeanization of digital policies, illustrated by initiatives, such as the matching between the Digital Compass targets and the strategic roadmaps that Member States must put forward to achieve digital convergence or the conditioning of the Resilience and Recovery Facility funds on reforms and investments also for digital technologies.

First, the article provides the theoretical background by discussing rationalist and constructivist perspectives on European integration. Then, it traces the evolution of digital policies, starting with the Digital Single Market Strategy to discern the main policy-making strategies and features. Finally, the research superimposes the main markers of EU digital policy upon the theoretical framework to discern the evolution of this grey policy area that has reached the forefront of European strategies. The research ends with an exploration of potential policy implications in the view of the Conference on the Future of Europe and potential pathways for evolving digital policy.

EU digital policy legislation has evolved enormously over the last 20 years due to the rapid development of digitalisation. In order to obtain the EU’s sovereignty to decide its own fate in the era of big data, hyperconnectivity and AI, a new phase of digital policy legislation is currently being introduced. The aim of my research is to examine which regulatory instruments are used to address the increasing regulatory challenges and to critically evaluate whether these instruments can strike a balance between the different prevalent regulatory goals, which are under growing tension: the goal to stimulate innovation and competitiveness – the goal to protect a long list of fundamental rights – and the goal to prevent foreseeable collective and societal harm.

To provide an understanding for the main regulatory orientations and tools in EU digital policy legislation, a short historical overview of the most relevant developed legal frameworks will be presented in a first step, with a focus on data and content. In a second step, the regulatory approaches of the two current main legislative frameworks: the proposal of the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), will be examined and the problems of the chosen regulatory instruments will be discussed. In a third step, general conclusions will be drawn on whether the choice of regulatory instruments is sufficient to deal with the growing contemporary challenges posed by the digital transformation. Subsequently, solutions for improving the current approaches are briefly proposed. The work is based on a qualitative analysis of the legal texts, as well as on 13 expert interviews with senior officials of the EU Commission, experts and civil society representatives.

Digital innovations and their consequences are becoming increasingly important for today's societies and across policy areas. They pose, however, also economic, political, and social challenges. Examples include anti-competitive practices of large platform companies, problems related to the dissemination of illegal or harmful content, and the protection of minors and the fundamental rights of citizens online. Geopolitical tensions and the Russian invasion of Ukraine have further underscored the importance of the digital, driving the adoption of concepts such as strategic autonomy and digital sovereignty among European policymakers. While current academic contributions have addressed the discursive and, more recently, the policy dimensions of the EU's response, much less attention has been paid to the polity dimension. This paper fills that gap by focusing on the political role of the EU Commission, whose powers have been strengthened, both in terms of breadth (the range of issues it is involved in) and depth (its authority in decision-making processes). I examine this strengthened political role by applying a neofunctional theoretical perspective to four cases of digital policy integration: financial resources, policy coordination, supervision, and democratic citizen empowerment. I show how different spillover processes (functional, political, and cultivated) explain the empowerment of the EU Commission and test the role of explanatory factors in terms of policy type (high/low politics), policy interdependence, the degree of pre-existing integration, and the autonomy of supranational institutions in the process.

The awareness of the necessity to adapt to the knowledge economy has been ever-present in the European debate, as greatly encapsulated by von der Leyen’s announcement that 2023 will be the “European year of skills”. This adaptation, however, contains an interesting paradox. While vocational education and training (VET) has been an area of Community action since the Treaty of Rome, the EU has only been allowed to support Member States’ policy action in (higher) education policies. However, the EU supports policy more widely and successfully in the area of higher education (HE) than in VET. As a result, EU-level efforts in the area of VET policy such as the European Credit System for VET (ECVET) have experienced failures, while in the area of HE, the EU has succeeded to foster a community approach with joint financial and legal instruments. This article analyses why and how European integration has developed differently in the areas of HE and VET. It takes the perspective of supranationalist theory and relies on (archival) EU documents and interviews with EU-level decision makers, bureaucrats and interest group representatives. Using the three components of supranationalism – transnational exchange, EU rules, supranational organisation – the article compares credit transfer systems (EU rules), student mobility (transnational exchange) and EU funding and EU-level lobbying (supranational organisation) in the two areas. It argues that even though EU rules in the area of VET have been strengthened, transnational society has remained weak. A more coherent transnational society in the area of HE policy has instead led to a stronger development of supranational organization.

This study utilises a novel approach to reappraise the prevalent model in explaining capital flows between Cyprus and Russia, which is round-tripping. While round-tripping suggests capital is routed from Russia to Cyprus before returning to the initial jurisdiction, this paper considers a focused case-study to examine the validity of the model. The usage of round-tripping is thought to obscure the identity of the beneficiary owner of the capital. explaining why it has become prevalent. Through the prominent TNK-BP case-study, it demonstrates that actual transactions utilise a much more complex framework that takes advantage of several jurisdictions. Macro data are then used to illuminate the widespread applicability of this paper’s findings, beyond the case of Cyp-Rus. This paper’s main contribution is to demonstrate how capital is transhipped across jurisdictions despite regulation seeking to curtail such movement. As such, this paper’s findings are particularly useful in finetuning measures aiming to supress the transfer of Russian capital to European jurisdictions, which are currently thought to circumvent sanctions. In concluding, it makes a strong case for an area studies approach to examine issues, such as the one considered in this paper, which were previously considered within the remit of financial economics’ studies and examined predominantly through quantitative modelling.