By Deborah James*
This report shows how Big Tech companies are working to constrain the ability of EU democratic bodies to regulate their activities in the public interest through “trade” agreements, which are binding and permanent.
Digitalization is the defining economic transformation of our time. The benefits to society are well-known, but the harms caused from the expansion of Big Tech’s are still being understood. The EU has started to recognise the urgent need rein in some of Big Tech’s most pernicious practices. The Digital Services Act (DSA), the Digital Markets Act (DMA), along with the Data Act, the Data Governance Act (DGA) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) are first steps towards ensuring that the digital sector of the economy operates under the same framework of fair play and the public interest as the rest of the economy.
The same EU that is advancing new laws governing the digital economy is promoting a digital trade policy that contradicts, and would severely constrain, current and future public interest policymaking in the EU and beyond.
Through a number of bilateral and regional trade agreements Big Tech is seeking to maintain a policy environment which favors private control of technological resources and practices, and data, for supernormal profit. Control over data – and in particular, the ability to transfer data across borders – and keeping their algorithms or source codes secret are the top goals of Big Tech in any “digital trade” agreement.
The EU has finalized trade agreements with a dedicated digital trade chapter with Canada, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, the UK, Mexico, Chile, Mercosur, and New Zealand. And is currently negotiating digital trade chapters with Indonesia, Australia, India, the region of Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), and plurilaterally in the WTO.
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