The European Union and the United States announced the launch of a new cooperation council on technology during their first summit under the Biden administration.
As Joe Biden visited Brussels on 15 June 2021 for the first EU-US Summit under the new American administration, hopes were high for the restauration of transatlantic cooperation in research and technology. Research and technology have been high on the European agenda since the coming to power of the new American President, and discussions on potential collaborations regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI), cybersecurity and data have flourished in the last few months. Now finally, the new cooperation agenda is shaping, especially on the digital dossier.
On 15 June, Brussels and Washington indeed delivered the creation of a new EU-US Trade and Technology Council (TTC). The goal of this council will be to facilitate trade and research collaboration across the Atlantic. With respect to trade, the Council will focus on deepening bilateral exchanges and investments, while avoiding barriers. It will also work on securing supply chains, particularly on key materials like semiconductors. For research, it will support collaboration and promote the development of compatible and international standards. The Council will also promote joint innovation by European and American firms. Finally, another goal of the TTC is to cooperate on key technology policies and on regulatory policy and enforcement.
This last point is particularly important for the EU, as the European Commission has been rolling out regulations on digital technologies and services since mid-2020. As part of its Data Strategy, the EU presented legislative texts like the Data Governance Act, the Digital Services and Market Acts and most recently the AI Act. It is no more secret that the EU hopes to lead by example with these regulations, making them the international norm by being the first to regulate. However, since the digital world is even more global than the analogue one, and since the biggest tech companies are based in the US, collaboration on technological policies within the TTC will be essential for the EU to achieve its goals. This will be particularly important regarding AI, as industry representatives have already called for unified rules on both sides of the Atlantic.
Another key issue for the development of cross-Atlantic digital technologies is the necessity to exchange data freely. A recent study mandated by DIGITALEUROPE suggests that safeguarding international data transfers is essential for the digital economy to flourish. According to this study, Europe could miss out on €1.3 trillion by 2030, if international data transfers are restricted. This emphasises the importance of international collaboration on digital standards and regulatory frameworks that allow for data transfers. In 2016, the EU and the US adopted a Privacy Shield that allowed companies to transfer data freely. However, the Court of Justice of the European Union invalidated the agreement in July 2020, impairing EU-US data transfer since then. Thus, the negotiation of a new data transfer agreement is also at the heart of the renewed collaboration.
The rebirth of EU-US relations in the tech domain comes just as the Union gives yet another push to its digital agenda. On 1 June, the Portuguese Presidency to the Council of the European Union published the Lisbon Declaration – `Digital Democracy with a Purpose’, which proposes a set of principles that the EC will build upon for the development of its own digital principles. On 3 June, the EC proposed a framework for a European Digital Identity, to facilitate the identification of citizens in the whole Union. These participate in the achievement of the Digital Decade objectives that the EC has set for 2030.