Abstract
In various official documents, the European Union has declared its goal to pursue a citizen-centric governance of digital transformation. Through a critical review of several of these ...documents, here we show how “citizen-centric” is more a glamouring than a driving concept. De facto, the EU is enabling a federated data system that is corporate-driven, economic-oriented, and GDPR-compliant; in other words, a Digital Single Market (DSM). This leaves out societal and collective-level dimensions of digital transformation—such as social inclusion, digital sovereignty, and environmental sustainability—which are acknowledged, but not operationalized, by the EU as pillars of a citizen-centric governance. Hence, the door is open to a complementary approach to the governance of digital transformation. We argue that, while a federated data model can constitute the tech-legal backbone of the emerging DSM, a commoning of data, as an ecosystemic approach that maintains a societal and collective outlook by default, can represent a complement to enact a truly citizen-centric governance.
Technological developments enable modern cars to drive autonomously. The EU has embraced this phenomenon in the hope that such technology can ameliorate mobility and environmental problems and has ...therefore engaged in tailoring technical solutions to driving automation in Europe. But driving automation, like other uses of AI, raises novel legal issues, including in criminal law – for instance when such vehicles malfunction and cause serious harm. By only pushing for a technological standard for self-driving cars, are EU lawmakers missing necessary regulatory aspects? In this article, we argue that criminal law ought to be reflected in EU strategy and offer a proposal to fill the current gap, suggesting an approach to allocate criminal liability when humans put AI systems in the driver’s seat.
This article analyzes the contribution of local authorities, either cities or regions, to the new EU digital strategy, based on the acknowledgment of the need for strengthened coordination among ...societal actors for digital transformation. By using document analysis of the new policy documents on Digital Europe, the article postulates that the new digital policy is different from previous endeavors and, as such, more active involvement should be sought from various actors. The article lists two potential pillars in which local authorities contribute, namely either by direct involvement, based on the main ideas from the strategy, or by indirect involvement. The indirect involvement regards the building of trust and the encouragement of citizen participation so as to increase the transparency of digital transformation with ramifications up to the European level.
Contemporary societies increasingly rely on the opportunities created by technologies that make possible the production, collection, processing, and reuse of huge datasets to obtain inferences that ...can be used in the most disparate fields. Among these, healthcare stands out in importance since in medical practice a considerable series of personal information is exchanged and shared. The protection needs of the individual sphere in the healthcare sector acquire a specific scope with reference to the use of information and communication technologies, which allow patients and healthcare professionals to communicate, or the latter among them, in view of the achievement of a series of goals that pertain to the diagnosis, prevention, monitoring, rehabilitation and treatment of an increasingly large number of diseases. In such a context, this works aims at proving a synthetic overview on the whole architecture adopted by the European Union in the field of cybersecurity, privacy, and health data protection, which appears fundamental for guaranteeing the fundamental rights of European citizens but also to deal with the challenges posed by the digital transition of contemporary societies.
Public Procurement as a Safeguard for Competition Vandercruysse, Laurens; Buts, Caroline; Dooms, Michaël
CoRe : European competition and regulatory law review,
8/6, Volume:
5, Issue:
2
Journal Article
Through the adoption of the European Union’s Digital Strategy, the European Commission aims to tackle pressing issues specific to markets of data-intensive services. One of these issues is the ...substantial and durable competitive advantage that emerges from having exclusive access to large sets of data. The Digital Markets Act proposal, a prime pillar of the Digital Strategy, allows for the identification of gatekeepers. These gatekeepers would then be subject to additional obligations, for example enabling wider data access. This article focuses on the market for smart city services and proposes the adoption of a more proactive approach through public procurement. We argue the onus should be on preventing service providers from becoming gatekeepers, rather than attempting to repair a competitive space once a gatekeeper has arisen. Keywords: smart city, public procurement, data protection, data sharing, EU Digital Strategy
