Technology ♦ 2006

Tech Sovereignty v. EU Simplicity

Jordan Smith

Europe’s digital law is in disarray. EU law conflicts with some European countries’ laws, and these laws, in turn, conflict with other European countries’ laws. The European Commission has enacted several laws aimed at ensuring one simple, harmonious framework for regulating the European digital sphere, including online speech. These regulations seek to create a framework that will apply to all EU countries, but the regulations have inadvertently sparked battles for tech sovereignty both among individual EU member countries and also between individual nations and the European Union. These EU digital regulations contain a “country of origin” principle that forbids regulation by any nation other than the online platform’s “home country.” This has led individual EU member states to rebel against the European Union and vie with other member states, resulting in laws that attempt to regulate online platforms that operate in the enacting country, even though the platforms are based in a different EU country. These attempts by member states to regulate online platforms expose the inherent tension between two founding values of the European Union—respecting member-state sovereignty and ensuring a unified European market.