Although the European Union already has a lot on its hands as it confronts a new wave of COVID-19 infections and seeks to position itself for a sustainable recovery, it must not ignore another crisis looming on the horizon. The bloc is rapidly and inexcusably falling behind China and America in the digital transition.
As part of the European Digital Strategy, the European Commission announced in June a Digital Services Act package to strengthen the Single Market for digital services and foster innovation and competitiveness of the European online environment. The revised package will “impact network operators, cloud and hosting providers, top-level domain registries and registrars”, among others.
Facebook has warned that it may pull out of Europe if the Irish data protection commissioner enforces a ban on sharing data with the US, after a landmark ruling by the European court of justice found in July that there were insufficient safeguards against snooping by US intelligence agencies.
The European Union’s highest court has given its support to the bloc’s rules that stop internet providers from charging customers for preferential access to their networks.
A few announcements from EURid, the top-level domain registry for .eu. First up, EURid has had to defer allowing EEA citizens to register .eu domain names.
This follows the announcement last month where the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) had reached an agreement that would extend the citizenship rule to EEA nationals.
European Union leaders are pursuing a new law to make it illegal for Amazon and Apple to give their own products preferential treatment over those of rivals that are sold on their online stores.
An unprecedented boycott of Facebook is moving across the Atlantic, as the coalition of activist groups behind the Stop Hate for Profit campaign have called on companies in Europe to join in the action.
Europe’s top court on Thursday struck down a trans-Atlantic agreement that allows scores of companies to move data between the European Union and the United States, causing uncertainty for businesses that rely on moving digital information seamlessly around the world.
EURid recently released their 2019 annual report and it was a year of some quite significant milestones that recognised the .eu registry for its achievements, but it was also a year where Brexit was a significant drag on .eu registrations, this being the major reason for a decline of over 78,000 registrations for the year.
Britain and other European countries are continuing to push for a global digital tax on technology companies such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, despite the US pulling out of the negotiations this week.