This paper explores the EU as a regulatory body and the ways in which private and public actors influence its decision-making process. EU policymaking occurs in an environment of both global decentredness as well as internal multi-level governance structures which impact the ways in which the EU can make policy. Using recent advances in EU digital policy, this research examines the bloc’s policy process to build a framework of European policymaking based on the multiple streams framework (MSF). It asks, how does the EU make decisions on its agenda, policy, and implementation, and which actors influence this process? This study uses as its empirical context, the EU’s recent legislative push into digital policy through platforms- and AI-regulation. The goal is to understand EU policy processes, the involvement and power of private interests and foreign governments, as well as the multi-level dynamics at play throughout the creation of policy.

The study examines the policy process of the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the Artificial Intelligence Act through stakeholder interviews with European Commission officials, MEPs, as well as representatives from industry and civil society. This is supported by in-depth analysis of EU procedural documents as well as freedom of information requests. EU digital policy is a good empirical context to study the EU policy process with a focus on decentredness because of the involvement of different actors, global significance of the policy initiative, and the vast array of private rule-setting mechanisms in the regulatory space.

This paper contributes to building an EU-based theory of the policy process based on the MSF. Previous conceptualisations of the MSF in an EU-context have sought to find functional equivalents between the EU and the MSF’s original US context. While this is a useful starting point, it does not go far enough in acknowledging the fundamentally decentred context. This paper considers more explicitly the global significance of today’s policy processes as well as the multi-level dynamics of the EU. The EU operates in a polycentric global environment and within a multi-level internal structure. Both distribute regulatory resources across many different public and private actors, which complicates the ability of any single actor to make policy.

The concept of EU strategic autonomy has become a focal point in academic and policy debates on Europe’s digital future, particularly in response to external dependencies, geopolitical rivalry, and systemic pressures. While existing litertaure has largely examined EU digital initiatives through legal, regulatory, or Commission-centred perspectives,comparatively little attention has been paid to the interinstitutional power dynamics through which strategic autonomy is politically articulated, coordinated, and operationalised.

This paper addresses the question: Who governs EU strategic autonomy in the digital domain? It advances three core arguments. First, strategic autonomy should be understood not merely as a policy outcome, but as a mode of governance emerging from interinstitutional interaction. Second, by focusing on the EU interinstitutiona relations (European Council-European Commission- Council of the EU), the paper demonstrates how political authority over digital strategic autonomy is negotiated among institutions with distinct roles, resources, and temporal logics. Third, it highlights the European Council’s role in framing digital sovereignty as a strategic priority and arbitrating national preferences, while the Commission translates these political orientations into regulatory and industrial initiatives such as the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, and the EU Chips Act.

Empirically, the paper draws on a qualitative analysis of European Council conclusions, EU institutional policy documents, and official communications related to digital policy and strategic autonomy. The analysis is grounded in a new institutionalist framework, combining interinstitutional and principal–agent perspectives to capture the distribution and exercise of authority in EU digital governance. Strategic autonomy is conceptualised as a politically constructed orientation shaped by institutional interaction, crisis-driven agenda-setting, and negotiated authority rather than as a fixed policy objective.

The findings show that EU digital strategic autonomy emerges from a hybrid governance structure combining intergovernmental bargaining, technocratic expertise, and political steering. By foregrounding interinstitutional power relations, the paper contributes to debates on EU digital policy, strategic autonomy, and global digital governance, offering a nuanced understanding of how authority is exercised in the digial domain within the EU.

Digital regulation has become a key arena of geopolitical contestation, yet little is known about how such pressures reshape authority within international organisations. This paper examines the European Commission’s Digital Omnibus proposal to explain how rising geopolitical pressure affects supranational regulatory strategies. In the paper, we test the argument that the geopoliticisation of EU digital policy has indirectly empowered industry stakeholders and Member States, limiting the Commission’s ability to pursue enforcement-intensive, market-shaping regulation, and curtailing its legitimacy as a regulator. External pressures, most notably from the Trump administration, amplified Member State concerns over retaliation, administrative costs, and uneven implementation, leading the Commission to recalibrate its regulatory approach towards competitiveness and simplification to preserve institutional legitimacy and coherence. Thus, the Omnibus is best understood as the Commission’s answer to a growing credibility gap between formal regulatory ambition and enforceable commitments in the digital single market. Using historical and discursive institutionalism, we employ process-tracing on Commission documents, legislative drafts, inter-institutional negotiations, enforcement data under the GDPR, DMA, and DSA, and semi-structured expert interviews. The findings suggest that the Omnibus is not a normative retreat but an adaptive strategy that redirects authority and stabilises governance under geopolitical uncertainty and contestation. Thus, the paper shows how geopolitical pressures can redistribute authority within supranational organisations, strengthening industry and Member State influence and forcing bureaucracies to recalibrate regulatory strategies to preserve legitimacy and enforcement credibility without formal institutional reform.