Digital Sovereignty in the EU: Searching for Legal Mechanisms for Marking the Borders

Authors : Lusine Vardanyan, Hovsep Kocharyan, Ondrej Hamuľák, Tanel Kerikmäe

DOI : 10.1007/978-3-031-27312-4_14

Volume : 1

Issue : 1

Year : 2023

Page No : 219-234

In accordance with the principles of international law, each state has the exclusive authority to enact laws on its territory. However, digital transformation, in particular the dissemination of data, threatens the traditional foundations of sovereignty and jurisdiction. At the same time, in recent years, the EU has increasingly turned to the need to introduce the idea of digital sovereignty into its agenda. In this chapter, researchers analyse EU legislation, in particular GDPR (Regulation (EU) 2016/679 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 27 April 2016 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Directive 95/46/EC (General Data Protection Regulation) (Text with EEA relevance). Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32016R0679) and DSA, as well as EU law enforcement practice, in order to identify the legal mechanisms by which the EU is trying to realize its idea of digital sovereignty. Special attention is paid to the mechanisms of localization and extraterritoriality. The researchers conclude that EU data protection laws distinguish between the establishment of an extraterritorial effect and the localization of data.


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