A Real Digital Omnibus for European Competitiveness and Security
This document is an expert contribution to ongoing discussions about the data aspects of the Digital Omnibus. My purpose is to provide the framework and background information necessary for trilogue interlocutors to identify which provisions can be retained, which can be improved, and which should be reconsidered, so that the final Omnibus achieves the impact that its proponents seek.
Simplification is a complicated project. The instinct that compelled the Draghi report on competitiveness, the Letta report on the Single Market, and the Niinistö report on civil and military preparedness is sound: that Europe’s regulatory architecture has accumulated complexity faster than it has delivered value. Member States echo it with their call for a “clear, simple, smart and innovation- and SME-friendly regulatory framework.” The European Commission has consequently proposed a Digital Omnibus “to optimise the application of the digital rulebook.”
This report’s premise is that good regulation is not an obstacle to European competitiveness but one of its structural preconditions. Businesses, citizens, and public authorities invest, build, and transact within markets to the extent that those markets constitute a trusted, reliable environment: where the rules are legible, the protections dependable, the enforcement predictable, and the logic according to which data and value circulate is known in advance. Where that environment exists, all actors can compete. Where it does not, the market defaults to the incumbents whose scale allows them to absorb uncertainty as a cost of doing business. The GDPR, for all its imperfections, has pulled in that direction: it brought us closer to a Single Market for personal data as a trusted environment in which European businesses can build without wondering what rules will apply to them tomorrow.
We must be careful that simplifying our system does not produce a less trustworthy environment. We must structure this evolution around a clear-eyed strategy that applies a detailed understanding of the digital economy to the improvement of European competitiveness. With that objective in mind, this report’s primary contribution is in explaining why certain changes will produce better outcomes than others.
This document is offered as an expert contribution to ongoing discussions about the data aspects of the Digital Omnibus. Drawn from my experience in digital policy, technology strategy, and digital business, I find that the Commission’s current Omnibus proposal contains a small number of provisions that achieve genuine simplification and strengthen the reliability of the regulatory environment, alongside a larger number of provisions that, however well-intentioned, would produce outcomes contrary to the legislative aims set out in the Commission’s own framing. My purpose is to provide the framework and background information necessary for trilogue interlocutors to identify which provisions can be retained, which can be improved, and which should be reconsidered, so that the final Omnibus achieves the impact that its proponents seek.
Authors: Robin Berjon