Conference Agenda

In 2020, the European Union (EU) introduced digital sovereignty (DS) as a formal policy objective in the development of its digital single market (DSM). Launched by the von der Leyen Commission, EU DS policy claims to be significantly different than that of the US and China with a ‘human-centred approach’ and high standards of data protection, fundamental rights, safety, and cyber-security. Since 2020, the scope of DS policy has significantly broadened, encompassing a wide range of areas, including the regulation of online platforms, security, and cloud computing. Studies to date have largely concentrated on EU-level decision-making across DSM sectors.

The academic analysis has largely rejected accusations that EU digital sovereignty policy veers towards protectionism and isolationism. Rather, it is seen as ‘preserv(ing) its ideological genes by simultaneously considering the transnational consequences of its regulatory activity’ (Celeste, 2021:225). Pohle and Thiel, in assessing European policy development, determine that digital sovereignty connects state, economic, and individual actors ‘while at the same time respecting European values and data protection standards’ (2020:10). The conclusion of these studies is that the key aim of EU digital sovereignty is the protection of European core values.

Although academic analysis of the EU level strategy is quite expansive, few studies have focused on national digital sovereignty policies-making. DS approaches differ from state to state. Several authors link digital sovereignty policy to protectionist measures (Farrand and Carrapico, 2022:446). Member States have reportedly adopted measures limiting access to national markets, restricting cross border trade, and empowering national champions (Bilbao-Ubillos et al., 2020; Lambach and Oppermann, 2022; Robles-Carrillo, 2023). Some authors see this as inconsistent with the EU’s stated DS policy goals (Cancela and Goikoetxea, 2023:4) claiming that national measures, including implementation of EU legislation, are not compliant with EU principles of non-discrimination, proportionality, and transparency (Akcali Gu, 2022:11). Do Member States follow or deviate from EU core values in their digital sovereignty policies? This paper analyses national policies through the lens of policy style with the assessment of digital sovereignty across a wide range of policy instruments from legislation, self-regulation, competition policy to public procurement tenders.

In recent years, digital sovereignty has become the talk of the town in Brussels and beyond. However, digital sovereignty remains ill-defined in both the literature and real-world discourse. This raises the question why such an ambiguous term has had such a discursive success story. In this paper, I address these debates by arguing that the notion of digital sovereignty is an expression of but also serves to build discursive bridges between two different countermovements against the predominantly neoliberal status quo of digitalization and digital policymaking. In this paper, I argue that the 6 discourse around digital sovereignty is expression of - and as a discursive tool to organize - two countermovements against the neoliberal model of digitalization (governance): A Polanyian countermovement that wants to wrest back rule-making authority from private platforms with the goal of (re-)politicizing digital market design; a Listian countermovement, by contrast, wants to reduce techno-economic dependence from rival or enemy countries through various form of 'government economic activism' with the goal of geopoliticizing digital policymaking. I empirically substantiate this claim through a variety of both qualitative and quantitative methods.

Through the 2021 Global Gateway, the EU is bundling public and private investments inter alia in strategic areas such as digital infrastructure, high-performance computing and artificial intelligence (AI). One goal is to promote EU rules and standards abroad and enable the seamless exchange of data and digital services (interoperability) with other regions, as well as the physical and cyber-security of critical infrastructure to protect against the weaponization of economic dependencies (as outlined in the 2023 Economic Security Strategy). Against that background, the proposed paper evaluates the Global Gateway as a new tool for promoting the EU’s digital sovereignty and open strategic autonomy. While the EU has sometimes successfully used its market power to promote its own digital rules (the so-called “Brussels effect”), the targeted steering of public and private investment in the digital economy and infrastructure follows a new geo-economic rationale in which the EU exercises greater public agency to achieve strategic goals in the digital sphere. The proposed paper explains this development as an orchestrated joint agency of key Member States and the Commission aimed at overcoming long-standing constraints in foreign affairs that have prevented more active and strategic international relations of the Union in the past.

Digitalization is changing socio-political reality at an unprecedented pace. The operations of big technological corporations, with market power being capable to disrupt not only the economic reality but also a political one, call for regulatory attention. Even though there is a common understanding of the necessity of proper governance of digitalization (see G20, OECD), there is no common approach to how to do it. The EU is an active actor, with its Digital strategy covering different aspects of digital world, where drive for innovation is balanced with challenges of digital sovereignty, fundamental rights and values of European integration. Also, new set of digital rights is being confirmed by the EU law and CJEU caselaw giving rise to European digital constitutionalism. Against this background, we can observe a noticeable regulatory trend - the activities of digital corporations are now subject to complex top-down, risk-based legislative action. There is a process of regulatory federalisation - the EU legislator is reaching for regulations (e.g. DMA, DSA, AI Act, E-privacy), which guarantee a unified approach across member states and which have an extraterritorial impact. This paper aims to discuss the impact of the EU’s approach on the global governance of the digital industry.