Céline Castets-Renard, Professor at the Faculty of Law – Civil Law Section of the University of Ottawa and co-responsible for the International Relations, Humanitarian Action, and Human Rights Axis of OBVIA, is publishing two works: a monograph on the European Digital Single Market and AI, as well as a collective work on the international issues of digital activities.
Law of the Digital Single Market and Artificial Intelligence
At first glance, the Digital Single Market may appear as a simple extension of the internal market to the digital environment. In reality, its scope is much broader, as it concerns the regulation of content, the use of technologies to facilitate internal and external exchanges within the European Union, as well as the infrastructures necessary for the development of digital technologies.
Thus, the digital realm is primarily the favored tool for completing the internal market.
Digital technologies easily eliminate border obstacles and encourage the development of cross-border e-commerce. Furthermore, the economic implications of digital technologies, such as smart contracts, blockchain, autonomous vehicles, and connected health, are such that the European Union must implement rules to encourage and stimulate innovation and competition, in order to position itself well in the global competition that is unfolding. Finally, the regulatory choices regarding digital technologies made by European institutions demonstrate a commitment to protecting social values and fundamental rights enshrined in the Charter of the European Union, such as the protection of personal data and privacy. The adoption of the GDPR is the quintessence of this European approach and reflects the potential impact the European Union could have on the global regulation of digital technologies.
The European Commission has made the Digital Single Market a priority, as evidenced by the publication of several texts relating to new technologies, the most prominent today being artificial intelligence. Its white paper—published in February 2020 and aimed at countering American and Chinese advancements—demonstrates a commitment to excellence, trust, and coherent rules in this area.
This work reflects the material, institutional, and conceptual dimensions of the Digital Single Market, as well as artificial intelligence. It offers a clear vision of the European Union in its technological environment.
International Issues of Digital Activities
The frequent assertion of the impotence of states or public international organizations in the face of the actions or failures of private digital actors seems to be nuanced today by the legal and technical measures adopted by the former to maintain control over the activities of the latter. Several examples attest to this over the past few years: threats of sanctions by the German state in 2017 against social media platforms violating national legal rules; hearings of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg before the U.S. Congress; the development of the Digital Single Market in the European Union; a complete overhaul of European and international taxation applicable to GAFA; state measures for data localization; extraterritoriality of applicable rules and validation of extraterritorial applications of domestic law by national judges. These current elements contribute to demonstrating that states have not renounced their legal sovereignty nor their ability to regulate the behavior of actors who believed they could escape the rule of law. They also tend to illustrate that this regulation often takes on original characteristics compared to classical legal mechanisms. This invites us to reflect on the meaning and form, possibly renewed, of the rule of law, as long as there is a stated intention to regulate or legislate digital activity on an international scale through law.
