Democracy

This paper outlines the policy background that has taken the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) and the UK’s Online Safety Bill down their respective legislative journeys and examines how law-makers have responded to the policy challenges in each jurisdiction, and highlights some important differences in the legislative approach.

Post Brexit, the UK and EU’s rules on digital monopolies are diverging. Both understand the consequences of digital monopoly power, whether that is in online harms (behaviour online which may hurt a person physically or emotionally), abuses of privacy, or boosting of profits at the expense of smaller rivals and business customers. However, competition policy in both jurisdictions has lagged behind the changes that digitisation has brought to many industries. This post considers the diverse interventions in the EU and the UK that attempt to address digital monopoly power, namely the new EU Digital Markets Act (DMA) and of the UK Competition and Markets Authority.

The UK Government has indicated its desire to diverge from the European data protection regime. This brief considers some of the main areas of divergence in the Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (DPDI Bill), the latest iteration of an effort to reform data protection to "free up the use of data" to "unleash its value across the economy" and for the UK to "operate as the world's data hub."

The publication of the post-Brexit UK Data Protection and Digital Information Bill (Data Reform Bill) in July 2022 signalled the UK Government’s intention to diverge from European data protection law in several critical areas. This blog post analyses this regulatory divergence and their potential implications, not only for UK-EU trade and relations, but also data subjects’ rights.

The differing approaches to the regulation of big tech in the UK and EU highlight some crucial questions for law-makers in both jurisdictions. The EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Online Safety Bill both tackle the need to restrict certain content online and create a framework for regulating online platforms. The measures affect the underlying fundamentals of Internet services in very different ways, which could impact their operation across borders. This blog post considers how current policy choices in these two laws may influence future policy directions and ultimately the whole Internet ecosystem.

As rapporteur for the European Parliament, MEP Sergey Lagodinsky has launched an initiative for a European legal framework for associations. With Christine Pütz, he discusses the objectives pursued and what it will take for the initiative to succeed.

Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine represents a watershed moment of truly unfathomable magnitude in European post-war history. This war between democracy and authoritarianism is also waged on another battleground: the media. A free, independent press and a vital, diverse media landscape are the backbone of a liberal democracy. But especially in Europe and in the EU, these pillars of democratic order are coming under increasing pressure. The Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung's European Democracy Conference 2022 will therefore focus on the question of how we can specifically and decisively counteract the advancing deterioration of free reporting.

The EuroPride 2022 fiasco shows us one thing: Serbia will not become part of the EU under President Aleksandar Vučić. The EU must face the cultural war in the Western Balkans head on, tackle disinformation and take Serbia’s EU accession seriously.

On 25 September 2022 Italy goes to the polls in an election that is characterized by many “first times.” It is the first time ever that the country votes just after the summer. Moreover, Italy is, for the first time, the country receiving most of the EU’s Next Generation EU budget (around 191 billion euros granted by common bonds). The “how to spend it” is of concern not only to the Italians and Brussels, but to the EU as a whole.

Anna Lührmann, Minister of State for Europe and Climate at the German Federal government, talks to Christine Pütz about the results of the "Actually European?! 2022" study and what the citizens expect from Germany’s European policy at this “turning point in history”.