EU’s new digital strategy targets data-hoarding tech firms

Enlarge / European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen launching "A Europe fit for the Digital Age" initiative at a press conference on February 19, 2020 in Brussels. (credit: Kenzo Tribouillard | AFP | Getty Images)

A comprehensive new grand strategy for handling European regulation in the "Digital Age" seeks to thread the technological needle, mitigating the harms of the information era-such as fraud, misinformation, and loss of privacy-while still reaping the benefits. The proposed plan, as released by the European Commission this week, names no names but still makes quite clear that the biggest US tech titans-especially Facebook and Google-would be squarely in the sights of any new legislation.

The data strategy plan (PDF) is just that: a plan, not a piece of legislation. As such, it's chock-full of aspirational language and lofty goals and relatively low on details. Its structure, however, lays out a clear framework for how the EU intends to approach data going forward.

The core idea is to make the treatment of data more universal and less segmented. One piece of legislation EU leaders plan to put forward later this year would "facilitate cross-border data use and prioritize interoperability requirements and standards within and across sectors," for example.

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