EU Digital and Technology Regulation in the Context of the EU’s Legal Identity and Global Challenges

Abstract

This study examines EU digital and technology regulation in light of the EU’s legal identity and global competition. The main thesis of the study is that European digital regulation is not just a normative framework in the context of increasing global trade and technological competition, but also a geo-economic tool. The study argues that the challenges of digitalisation and the integration of European law are linked in a multi-factor structure. For the European Union, the law is not just a regulatory technique, but a constitutive element of a common identity based on European cultural heritage. At parallel with this, the development of the digital technology has gained a global, geostrategic dimension, which has become one of the defining fields of competition between states. The EU’s response to these challenges is necessarily law-based, which can be interpreted in part as a defensive reflex arising from technological vulnerability. The study demonstrates that this defensive regulatory dynamic transforms into geo-economic power through feedback, as thanks to the EU’s globally dominant market, the regulation exerts extraterritorial influence. As a result, EU digital legislation can even be interpreted as a quasi-commercial tool in a geopolitical context. An analysis of expected legislative trends suggests that no conceptual shift is foreseeable in the short term: the new regulatory packages represent a fine-tuning of the existing, heavily regulation-driven model, which is permanently preserved by the structural and sovereignty characteristics of the EU.