Chloe Teevan

Chloe Teevan

Investigadora do European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Maastricht Researcher at the European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM), Maastricht

think that after Pedro’s very interesting and stimulating introduction I will end up in much the same place, looking at the European governments but I’ll come at it from a different perspective which is that of the geopolitical competition that we are seeing in the world today. The USA and China are driving this competition which we see across all kinds of different arenas, most notably in the economic but also in multilateral institutions and the tech sector where we see a lot of concerns and where we are seeing the beginnings of what is becoming a deeper decoupling of the USA and the Chinese economies. This has been most famously exemplified by the case of Huawei with the USA first banning Huawei in the country and then increasing pressure over European, African countries and others around the world, to ban Huawei. Today, actually few have banned it, but what we see is very much that there is a decoupling happening between the digital actors and the internet as a whole between these two great powers with very different models being promoted by the USA and China, and each of them seeking allies to work alongside them.

From the European perspective, there isn’t really an interest in following one of these actors, and in decoupling from the other, and so the EU has resisted the USA’s demands to de-

Icouple from China, but at the same time we do see that there are perhaps more areas of agreement between the US and Europe than between China and Europe, when it comes to internet governance in particular. But, ultimately, the EU has its own geopolitical considerations and doesn’t want to be caught between the two other actors, and this has led to a growing focus in the EU on what we are calling digital sovereignty, this is part of a bigger consideration around how the EU can be a more sovereign actor in the world, can have a stronger economy, can be a leader on the green transition, but also how the EU can develop its own governance model for the digital sphere, that takes the fine balance between the surveillance capitalism that very much comes from the USA and the state surveillance that is increasingly becoming evident in China and in some of its allies. But so far this model is very much in its early days as Pedro mentioned, there are very big aspirations but so far what we have seen with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) was a very important first step towards regulating personal data but there would be many other questions to deal with in the months and years to come. One of the big initiatives that is expected in the coming months is the Digital Services Act which is expected also to look at how online platforms deal with disinformation and also look at competition and at competitors' practices by some of

these platforms. This leads on to another aspect of the European approach to digital sovereignty which is a growing focus on how can the EU actually have a stronger and more vibrant tech sector of its own because when we think of the big tech actors in Europe most of them are ultimately American companies, whereas China has created also its own national champions. China is the increasingly global actor, and companies like Huawei have already got a global reach in terms of infrastructure. The EU Commission underlays its digital top priorities along with the Green Deal and climate change, and there has been a lot of very strong rhetoric around how Europe needs to become a leader on AI and content computing and all of these technologies of the future. But in the recently agreed multiannual financial framework for the EU seven year budget, we haven’t actually seen a huge amount of money put aside for the digital. It is going to be very important for the EU and its member states not only to strengthen governance, but also really invest in European digital innovation systems and in the European tech sector.

It is going to be very important for the EU to invest in European digital innovation systems and in the European tech sector.