Negotiations are in full swing over the next EU commissioners and portfolios, and it will still be a few weeks before we see white smoke coming out of the Berlaymont building.
Meanwhile, signals are appearing over upcoming priorities for the second mandate of Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, expected to start 1 Nov. Among the most visible was the report commissioned by von der Leyen by former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank President Mario Draghi on European competitiveness.
For Draghi, Europe faces an existential challenge. "The only way to meet this challenge is to grow and become more productive, preserving our values of equity and social inclusion. And the only way to become more productive is for Europe to radically change," he warns.
The strategy overview and in-depth report analyze and offer concrete recommendations across competitiveness, innovation, dependencies and investment. Among those most relevant to our community, the report notes EU General Data Protection Regulation shortcomings and calls for "developing simplified rules and enforcing harmonised implementation of the GDPR in the Member States, while removing regulatory overlaps with the (Artificial Intelligence) Act."
Regarding AI, Draghi strongly recommends addressing a triptych of capital and financing, skills and human capital, and facilitating access to a large single market. AI development should be accelerated across "ten strategic sectors where EU business models will benefit most from rapid AI introduction (automotives, advanced manufacturing and robotics, energy, telecoms, agriculture, aerospace, defense, environmental forecasting, pharma and healthcare)."
The report notes the EU should "retain control of security, data encryption and residency capabilities within EU companies and institutions and facilitate the consolidation of EU cloud providers.”
On digital policy, it revisits stress points regarding sovereign cloud and data sharing, putting noteworthy emphasis on data sharing.
At an event on EU digital policy, Werner Stengg, cabinet expert on the cabinet of Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager, spoke about the second von der Leyen mandate beginning formally in a couple of months. "Prosperity and competitiveness" are indeed very high on the priority list, as are implementation and enforcement.
"There will be new regulation, but it will not be an avalanche,” Stengg said.
He underlined the limitations of previous laws, such as the GDPR, asserting that much like the Data Strategy package, new laws should be built with those drawbacks in mind.
He argued for more centralized enforcement — as is the case with the Digital Services Act and the AI Act — compared to the GDPR. On the DSA, he said the EU will enforce the regulation "as needed, not more or less. Before banning any company, there are other enforcement steps."
He also called for more principle-based and flexible laws, leveraging codes of conducts.
This emphasis on defining the future of Europe and European policy is certainly not unprecedented during a time of transition. The Draghi report though seems to have landed quite heavily on the desks of European governments, industry groups, civil society and policy makers.
It will be worth monitoring how far that weight carries, particularly in a European Parliament that is, after all, leaning politically slightly more to the right than before.
Isabelle Roccia, CIPP/E, is the managing director, Europe, for the IAPP.
