Thu 20. Mar 2025, 14:51
A digital storm is brewing between the USA and the EU: according to Wolfgang Kleinwächter, Professor Emeritus of Internet Policy and Regulation at Aarhus University, the world is more distant than ever from a harmonized global digital legal order.
It wasn't that long ago. On April 28, 2022, the European Union, the USA and over 60 other international partners adopted the “Declaration for the Future of the Internet”. Initiated by the USA, the Declaration for the Future of the Internet is only a political declaration, but the parties to the agreement reaffirm their commitment to protecting and respecting human rights on the internet and in the digital world as a whole. It is based on five principles, namely “Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms”, “A Global Internet”, “Inclusive and Affordable Access to the Internet”, “Trust in the Digital Ecosystem” and “Multistakeholder Internet Governance”, with each of these principles being subdivided into various sub-points. Less than three years later, even such legally non-binding declarations seem unattainable. With the memorandum “Defending American Companies and Innovators From Overseas Extortion and Unfair Fines and Penalties” of February 21, 2025, Kleinwächter believes that the US has instead issued a declaration of digital war, as the EU has enacted the most comprehensive regulations for the digital world and has imposed fines in the millions on US tech giants in recent years.
Concerned about its digital independence and sovereignty, the EU in particular would have taken a pioneering role, as Kleinwächter explains in a viewpoint article for the daily newspaper “Tagesspiegel”. Since 2020, more than a dozen laws have been passed to regulate the digital space with more than 1,500 pages of text: with the Digital Service Act (DSA), the Digital Market Act (DMA), the Digital Resilience Act (DRA), the Directive on measures for a high common level of cybersecurity across the EU (Network and Information Security 2, or NIS-2 for short), the Media Freedom Act (MFA), the Data Governance Act (DGA) and, most recently, the EU AI Act in 2024, the EU has established a highly developed legal system. However, the Chinese and Americans are ahead of the rest of the world in the areas of search engines, social networks, online commerce, digital platforms and artificial intelligence; catching up by creating a fair competitive framework for everyone has only had limited success so far. With the inauguration of the Trump administration, this is all water under the bridge anyway. With “America First”, Trump is focusing primarily on American tech companies, and they would see European regulations as an unacceptable restriction on their scope of action.
The EU is in a complicated situation, a digital regulatory structure that has been built up over five years has been shaken to its foundations. But European internet companies are also groaning under the multitude of digital regulations. Entire legal departments are needed to internalize the details, which many small and medium-sized companies cannot afford for cost reasons. So will the law of the jungle soon trump the strength of the law? Prof. Kleinwächter is not very positive: Europe's digital future is facing stormy times.
You can find the full article (in German) by Prof. Wolfgang Kleinwächter at:
https://background.tagesspiegel.de/digi ... -zieht-aufYou can find the memorandum "Defending American Companies and Innovators From Overseas Extortion and Unfair Fines and Penalties" at:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential ... penalties/