Research project

Investigator: Roxana Vatanparast

Abstract:
In recent years, transatlantic governance of data transfers, regulations on artificial intelligence, and issues on cybersecurity and digital infrastructures have presented a number of legal and policy challenges for the United States (US) and European Union (EU), two global leaders in these domains. In 2021, the US and EU formed the Transatlantic Trade and Technology Council (TTC), aiming for cooperation on policy areas relating to technology. These include issues on digital trade, supply chains, privacy, and market power, promoting greener technologies, and strengthening security for critical communications infrastructure. The EU and US have until now taken different approaches to issues of digital sovereignty and standardization. While the EU has taken a role as a global regulatory leader in the digital domain with extraterritorial standardizing effects, the US has presented its own version of digital sovereignty and standardization through not only regulatory standards, but also global governance by powerful platform firms and its private-sector friendly approach to regulation. The TTC presents a novel domain for struggle over digital governance, where the EU and US will likely confront challenges over setting technical standards, but also over which forms of digital sovereignty and values will prevail in the global digital economy. This struggle has crucial policy and distributive effects globally, since both the EU and US are dominant players in global governance of the digital economy, and it is not clear what forms of public deliberation are feasible with regard to this political body or what is at stake for third states and the political communities that will be affected by its policies. Moreover, the TTC presents an alternative to other existing approaches to digital governance, especially from international organizations and from China.

Recent scholarship has showed that organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO) and International Telecommunications Union (ITU) have been unable to obtain consensus and cooperation over issues involving digital trade, standardization, and policy issues around digital technologies. This research project therefore analyzes the new institutional arrangement of the TTC to better understand the US and EU’s approaches to digital sovereignty and standardization, as well as how this new political body aims to overcome the limitations of international organizations like the ITU in obtaining consensus and cooperation on the conflicting values and interests relating to the global digital economy, as well as the Chinese approach to governance of the digital economy. Based on these findings, it is scrutinized whether this political body can meet the challenges of transatlantic governance over digital technology in three of its stated policy domains: (1) digital trade, supply chains, and standardization; (2) climate effects of artificial intelligence and green technologies; and (3) promoting security over critical communications infrastructures.