scholarly journals Digital sovereignty for Europe in the context of global data governance

Author(s):  
Yan Shevchenko

The European Union (EU) has been advocating a strategy to assert its digital sovereignty for a relatively long period of time. This attempt, however, runs up against a range of obvious problems and obstacles, such as a united Europe’s dependence on foreign technologies and services and the inadequacy of investments made to support its industrial policy (in particular in the digital sphere). The EU is trying to overcome these problems with an ambitious strategy, the “European strategy for data”, which will enable the Union to navigate in an international context characterized by a substantial lack of a global data governance system, but the efficiency and effectiveness of the strategy can only be assessed in a few years' time. According to the author of this paper’s point of view, to achieve its policy objectives, the EU must pay attention to safeguarding the competitiveness of its companies, pursuing policies that, in defending the right to privacy and security of European users, are clear and harmonized. At the same time, the EU must implement policies that are able to redistribute the wealth produced in the digital field, countering the current dangerous concentrations of wealth and power in the hands of a few oligopolistic companies.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 99-127
Author(s):  
Gennadi Tolstopyatenko ◽  
Stanislav Ageev

This article is devoted to the roots of material and procedural legal problems arising in the course of the automatic exchange of information between the European Union (EU) and Russia. This matter is topical since automatic exchange of information is a method of cooperation between tax authorities from different countries that is new and rapidly developing. From our point of view, it is high time to discuss some of the legal problems that are inherent in automatic exchange of information. As far as we can see, the fundamental problems are: (1) th problem of choosing an appropriate legal basis for automatic exchange of information and (2) the problem of the international standards for automatic exchange of information developed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) being implemented to differing extents in the national legislation of different countries. In this article we suggest ways of solving the aforementioned problems in order to make automatic exchange of information between the EU and Russia more comfortable at the intergovernmental level. The solution of these problems will help to concentrate on another issue – the problem of protecting taxpayers’ rights, primarily the right to confidentiality, which is beyond the scope of this article but still very important in the light of the enhancement of global tax transparency.


2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (3) ◽  
pp. 569-597 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orla Lynskey

AbstractArticle 8 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights sets out a right to data protection which sits alongside, and in addition to, the established right to privacy in the Charter. The Charter's inclusion of an independent right to data protection differentiates it from other international human rights documents which treat data protection as a subset of the right to privacy. Its introduction and its relationship with the established right to privacy merit an explanation. This paper explores the relationship between the rights to data protection and privacy. It demonstrates that, to date, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has consistently conflated the two rights. However, based on a comparison between the scope of the two rights as well as the protection they offer to individuals whose personal data are processed, it claims that the two rights are distinct. It argues that the right to data protection provides individuals with more rights over more types of data than the right to privacy. It suggests that the enhanced control over personal data provided by the right to data protection serves two purposes: first, it proactively promotes individual personality rights which are threatened by personal data processing and, second, it reduces the power and information asymmetries between individuals and those who process their data. For these reasons, this paper suggests that there ought to be explicit judicial recognition of the distinction between the two rights.


2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-116
Author(s):  
O. Bányai

Abstract Taking into consideration that more than 40% of the final energy consumption of the EU stems from the residential and commercial building sector, it is not surprising that the community-level regulation strongly focuses on these sectors (Eurostat, 2011). In respect to buildings’ energy performance, the European Parliament and the Council Directive 2010/31/EU on the energy performance of buildings requires from Member States (hereinafter: MS) to ensure that, by 31 December 2020, all new buildings are to be nearly ‘zero-energy’ buildings. Furthermore, MSs shall ensure that energy performance certificates are to be issued for buildings constructed, sold or rented out to a new tenant. Although the concerning regulation is being developed in the right way, several corrections are still required from an ecological point of view.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-122
Author(s):  
Ewa Kaczan-Winiarska

The Austrian government is extremely sceptical about the accession negotiations which are conducted by the European Commission on behalf of the European Union with Turkey and calls for the negotiation process to end. Serious reservations of Vienna have been raised by the current political situation in Turkey under the rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as well as by the standards of democracy in Turkey, which differ greatly from European standards. Serious deficiencies in rule of law, freedom of speech and independence of the judiciary, confirmed in the latest European Commission report on Turkey, do not justify, from Vienna’s point of view, the continuation of talks with Ankara on EU membership. In fact, Austria’s scepticism about the European perspective for Turkey has a longer tradition. This was marked previously in 2005 when the accession negotiations began. Until now, Austria’s position has not had enough clout within the European arena. Pragmatic cooperation with Turkey as a strategic partner of the EU, both in the context of the migration crisis and security policy, proved to be a key factor. The question is whether Austria, which took over the EU presidency from 1.7.2018, will be able to more strongly accentuate its reservations about Turkey and even build an alliance of Member States strong enough to block Turkey’s accession process.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (11) ◽  
pp. 167-173
Author(s):  
Mihail V. Rybin ◽  
◽  
Alexander A. Stepanov ◽  
Nadezhda V. Morozova ◽  
◽  
...  

The article reveals and analyzes conceptual approaches to the formation of strategic directions of energy policy of the European Union and Poland in the first decades of the XXI century. A critical assess-ment is given from the point of view of international cooperation in the field of energy between the Russian Federation, Poland and the EU as a whole and, in particular, European, national and regional programs for the transformation of the fuel and energy sector in the conditions of decarbonization and transition to green energy.


Author(s):  
Antonios Roumpakis ◽  
Theo Papadopoulos

This chapter studies the character of contemporary socioeconomic governance in the EU. It draws on empirical evidence capturing the type and extent of regulatory changes in the fields of industrial relations, corporate governance, and the coordination of macro-economic policy in the EU. The effects of these changes are long term, cumulative, and mutually reinforcing and should be seen as integral elements of a relatively coherent project to establish a form of transnational polity in Europe that privileges competition as its regulatory rationale. Indeed, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been institutionally prioritising market freedoms and competition over labour rights, and especially the right to collective action in an emerging transnational regulatory field in the EU. Meanwhile, the new procedures of European macro-economic coordination construe national wage setting, collective bargaining institutions, and, more generally, social policy as adjustment variables serving primarily the purpose of promoting or restoring member states' economic competitiveness.


Bioderecho.es ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gloria María González Suárez

Con motivo de la situación actual a la que nos enfrentamos por la pandemia de la COVID-19 se ha planteado en diversas ocasiones la implantación de un certificado verde digital. El 17 de marzo de 2021 la Comisión Europea presentó una propuesta de creación del certificado con el fin de facilitar el ejercicio del derecho a la libre circulación dentro de la Unión Europea durante la pandemia. Todo ello plantea diversas cuestiones jurídicas en cuanto a la protección de datos sanitarios, el derecho a la libre circulación y la eficacia y proporcionalidad de medidas que deben ser objeto de análisis tanto desde el punto de vista jurídico como del punto de vista ético ya que, en ciertas ocasiones la aplicación de medidas puede afectar al derecho a la igualdad de los ciudadanos. Due to the current situation we are facing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the implementation of a digital green certificate has been proposed on several occasions. On March 17, 2021, the European Commission presented a proposal to create the certificate in order to facilitate the exercise of the right of free movement within the European Union during the pandemic. All this raises various legal questions regarding the protection of health data, the right of free movement and the efficacy and proportionality of measures that must be analyzed from both the legal and ethical point of view since, on certain occasions the application of measures may affect the right of equality of citizens.


2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Kuner

The European Union (EU) has supported the growing calls for the creation of an international legal framework to safeguard data protection rights. At the same time, it has worked to spread its data protection law to other regions, and recent judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) have reaffirmed the autonomous nature of EU law and the primacy of EU fundamental rights law. The tension between initiatives to create a global data protection framework and the assertion of EU data protection law raises questions about how the EU can best promote data protection on a global level, and about the EU’s responsibilities to third countries that have adopted its system of data protection.


2021 ◽  
Vol 118 ◽  
pp. 02011
Author(s):  
Georgy Borisovich Romanovsky ◽  
Olga Valentinovna Romanovskaya ◽  
Vladislav Georgievich Romanovsky ◽  
Anastasia Andreevna Ryzhova ◽  
Olga Aleksandrovna Ryzhova

The purpose of the research is to formulate the general guidelines for the transformation of human rights as a result of global threats. The methodological framework was the methods of comparative legal research, which showed the general trends in the development of the human rights legislation under the influence of global threats. By the example of the responses of states to the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, it is shown how legislative innovations expanding the powers of law enforcement agencies and special services have led to the revision of the content of such basic human rights as the right to privacy and/or the right to personal inviolability. Highlighted is the concept of the “war on terror” (formulated by the United States President in 2001), which allows terrorists to be treated as representatives of a belligerent but without providing any international guarantees enshrined in the provisions of the international humanitarian law. The consequences of the introduction of biomedical technologies, that are aggressive towards humans, are presented, namely the creation of chimeric organisms that contribute to blurring the interspecific boundaries; creation of a genetically modified organism – human embryo; the development of an artificial uterus capable of bearing a human fetus practically from the time the male and female reproductive cells join. The results consist in the identified trends in the development of legal institutions, such as the formulation of new human rights often replacing or distorting the content of basic recognised human rights enshrined in the key international documents and constitutions of the countries of the world; bypassing the legal prohibitions established over the past decades by introducing relativism and assessing any situation from the point of view of the conditions for its occurrence. The novelty of the research lies in the authors’ position and is formulated as follows: the modern system of human rights is facing a serious crisis. Failure to effectively respond to symbolic challenges and threats is one of the factors necessitating the need for monitoring many regulatory documents. But a significant reason for the backlash also lies in the fact that we are at the turn of an era when technology shows humanity the possibility of correcting the very nature of Homo sapiens.


2013 ◽  
pp. 143-146
Author(s):  
Orsolya Nagy

The use of renewable energies has a long past, even though its share of the total energy use is rather low in European terms. However, the tendencies are definitely favourable which is further strengthened by the dedication of the European Union to sustainable development and combat against climate change. The European Union is on the right track in achieving its goal which is to be able to cover 20% its energy need from renewable energy resources by 2020. The increased use of wind, solar, water, tidal, geothermal and biomass energy will reduce the energy import dependence of the European Union and it will stimulate innovation.


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