European Double Standard

The European Union is present process a big conceptual shift in the way it understands digital governance, competitiveness, and state intervention. This shift is most clearly articulated in Draghi Report on European Competitiveness, which acknowledges that Europe can not depend on regulatory authority alone to safe its technological future. As an alternative, the report requires large-scale industrial coverage, strategic public funding, coordinated state motion, and deliberate capacity-building in vital digital sectors. Public intervention and focused subsidies are not framed as market distortions, however as existential requirements in an period outlined by geopolitical competitors and technological focus.

This recognition marks an vital second of candour in EU coverage discourse. But it additionally exposes a longstanding asymmetry in how comparable methods are evaluated when pursued exterior Europe. The very instruments now embraced as pragmatic realism state-backed infrastructure, conditional market entry, strategic autonomy, and home capacity-building have, for many years, been used to criticize International South governments as protectionist, nationalist, or hostile to innovation. When Europe adopts these methods, they seem accountable and forward-looking; when others do, they’re framed as suspect or illegitimate. The Draghi Report thus inadvertently reveals a deeper normative hypocrisy embedded in international digital governance discourse: intervention is professional when Europe does it, questionable when everybody else follows swimsuit.[1]

This asymmetry will not be merely rhetorical. It shapes institutional behaviour, regulatory confidence, and the distribution of authority within the international digital order. It determines who’s recognised as a professional rule-maker and who stays burdened with the duty to justify governance itself. This put up argues that Europe’s evolving embrace of business coverage, sovereignty, and strategic intervention ought to immediate a vital re-examination of how comparable measures are evaluated past the EU. With out such reflection, the EU dangers reproducing a hierarchical mannequin of digital governance that undermines its personal claims to equity, universality, and normative management.

Towards this backdrop, this put up examines how this double customary operates throughout three key domains: digital sovereignty and information safety, industrial coverage and competitors, and the proper to manage.

From Norm-Setter to Strategic Actor

Over the previous decade, the European Union has intentionally cultivated its identification as a worldwide standard-setter in digital regulation. By devices such because the GDPR, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), the Digital Companies Act (DSA), and the AI Act, the EU has projected a imaginative and prescient of digital governance grounded in elementary rights, market equity, and threat mitigation. These devices are routinely introduced not merely as sectoral regulation, however as constitutional interventions within the digital economy- designed to self-discipline personal energy, right structural asymmetries, and embed public values into technological programs. This regulatory posture has strengthened the EU’s self-image and exterior repute as a principled guardian of each residents and markets.

What’s more and more acknowledged, nonetheless, is that regulation alone can not compensate for Europe’s structural dependencies in vital technological domains. The EU’s rising reliance on non-European suppliers for semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, and superior AI capabilities has uncovered the bounds of normative energy with out materials capability. The EU Chips Act marks a decisive break on this regard. Relatively than counting on market correction or competitors legislation alone, the Act explicitly endorses public funding, relaxed state help guidelines, and coordinated industrial planning to safe semiconductor provide chains and home manufacturing capability. Equally, Essential Initiatives of Widespread European Curiosity (IPCEIs) in microelectronics, batteries, and cloud infrastructure institutionalize large-scale state intervention as a professional and crucial software of financial governance. GAIA-X, regardless of its contested governance construction and uneven progress, displays the identical underlying ambition: to reclaim infrastructural management in a sector dominated by overseas hyperscalers.

Taken collectively, these initiatives sign a structural transition within the EU’s understanding of its position within the digital economic system. Europe is not positioning itself solely as a regulator of markets created elsewhere, however as a strategic financial actor prepared to form, subsidize, and steer technological improvement instantly. Crucially, this transition has been extensively accepted inside European coverage discourse as each inevitable and overdue for an adjustment to geopolitical actuality somewhat than a departure from liberal rules. But this acceptance stays strikingly selective. Comparable methods pursued exterior Europe proceed to be evaluated by means of a far much less charitable lens.

A Sovereign Stage: When Europe “Reclaims” and the Relaxation “Retrogress”

Inside modern EU coverage discourse, “digital sovereignty” has turn out to be a central organizing idea. It capabilities as a bridge between regulatory ambition, industrial coverage, and geopolitical consciousness. In official communications and strategic paperwork, digital sovereignty is framed as a crucial response to Europe’s structural dependencies on non-European expertise suppliers, notably in information infrastructure, cloud providers, and superior computing. The idea is persistently introduced as defensive somewhat than protectionist: a way of safeguarding democratic governance, financial resilience, and the Union’s capability to behave autonomously in an more and more contested technological setting.

The Draghi Report crystallizes this logic. By acknowledging that Europe can not depend on regulatory authority alone, the report situates digital sovereignty squarely inside a broader technique of fabric capacity-building and state intervention. Sovereignty, on this account, will not be a rhetorical flourish however a sensible requirement for competitiveness and survival. Strategic autonomy, public funding, and coordinated state motion are handled not as ideological departures however as unavoidable responses to geopolitical and financial actuality.

But this framing stays strikingly uneven when utilized past Europe. When India enacted its Digital Private Knowledge Safety Act, worldwide commentary regularly characterised the laws as an expression of financial nationalism or digital protectionism. Regardless of its substantive convergence with core GDPR rules lawful processing, accountability, goal limitation India’s assertion of jurisdiction over information governance was framed as a risk to international information flows and market openness. Comparable reactions have accompanied information localisation measures or sovereignty claims in Africa and Latin America, which are sometimes portrayed as retrograde or destabilising.

What the Draghi Report inadvertently exposes is the fragility of this distinction. If Europe’s flip towards sovereignty is justified by vulnerability, dependency, and geopolitical strain, then the identical structural circumstances, usually extra acute, apply to many International South states. But whereas European sovereignty is narrated as rational reclamation, International South sovereignty is framed as regression. The distinction lies not within the coverage devices deployed, however within the normative presumption hooked up to the actor deploying them.

This asymmetry reveals a deeper hierarchy embedded in international digital governance discourse. European assertions of sovereignty are presumed to be rights-enhancing and system-preserving; non-European assertions are handled as deviations from an assumed liberal baseline. Sovereignty thus turns into a selectively granted entitlement somewhat than a common attribute of political authority. On this sense, Europe’s express embrace of sovereignty by means of the Draghi Report doesn’t merely mark a coverage shift it exposes the inconsistency of long-standing evaluative frameworks that professional intervention on the centre whereas problematising it on the periphery.

The Proper to Regulate vs. the Burden to Justify

The asymmetry in how sovereignty is evaluated finds concrete expression within the regulatory course of itself. Inside the EU, expansive regulatory initiatives, whether or not addressing platform energy, algorithmic threat, or market focus, profit from a robust presumption of legitimacy. Devices such because the DMA, DSA, and AI Act are debated intensely, however the underlying premise that European establishments possess each the authority and the competence to intervene within the digital economic system is never questioned. Regulatory ambition is framed as a pure extension of democratic mandate and technocratic experience.

The Draghi Report reinforces this presumption by explicitly normalizing state intervention as a core element of financial governance. By framing public funding, subsidies, and coordinated industrial technique as existential requirements somewhat than distortions, the report collapses the normal distinction between regulation and intervention. In doing so, it confirms what EU follow has lengthy advised: that the proper to manage is inseparable from the capability to form markets and technological trajectories.

International South regulators function below markedly totally different circumstances. Proposals to manage digital platforms, mandate algorithmic transparency, impose labour protections, or assert management over information routinely encounter resistance from multinational corporations, commerce companions, and worldwide monetary establishments. These measures are regularly framed as threats to innovation, breaches of funding obligations, or indicators of regulatory immaturity. Southern regulators thus face a disproportionate burden of justification. They have to exhibit not solely the proportionality of particular measures, however the legitimacy of regulatory intervention as such.

This asymmetry produces a type of structural regulatory self-doubt. Anticipating commerce retaliation, investor arbitration, or reputational injury, governments could delay, dilute, or abandon regulatory initiatives even the place platform dominance, labour precarity, or shopper hurt is effectively documented. Importantly, this dynamic doesn’t mirror an absence of regulatory capability or normative dedication. Relatively, it displays an uneven distribution of epistemic authority: Europe is presumed to manage responsibly till confirmed in any other case; others are presumed irresponsible except exhaustively justified.

Learn alongside the Draghi Report, this disparity turns into more and more tough to defend. If Europe now brazenly acknowledges that market forces alone can not ship public goals within the digital economic system, then the continued skepticism towards comparable conclusions reached elsewhere seems much less like principled concern and extra like normative gatekeeping. The fitting to manage, in follow, stays inconsistently allotted, affirmed for some as an expression of governance, withheld from others as a deviation from it.

De Facto Dominion: The EU’s Extraterritorial Sweep vs. the “Delicate Colonization” Label

The EU’s train of extraterritorial regulatory energy gives one of many clearest illustrations of how legitimacy in international digital governance is selectively distributed. The GDPR applies to any entity worldwide that processes the non-public information of people situated within the Union, no matter the place that processing takes place. This jurisdictional attain is neither unintended nor marginal; it’s a deliberate governance technique that circumstances entry to the EU market on compliance with European authorized norms. Companies throughout jurisdictions from U.S. expertise conglomerates to African tech startups have restructured information practices, contractual preparations, and technical architectures in an effort to keep entry to European customers.

Dominant coverage and educational narratives have persistently framed this extraterritoriality as a normative achievement. The GDPR is well known as a mannequin of rights-based universalism whose international results are justified by the ethical weight of elementary rights safety. Regulatory spillovers are described as useful diffusion somewhat than constraint, and Europe’s capability to form behaviour past its borders is introduced as proof of professional management somewhat than coercive leverage.

The Draghi Report makes express what has lengthy remained implicit on this framing: that Europe’s regulatory attain is inseparable from its market energy and should now be actively strengthened by strategic financial capability. By recognizing that regulatory authority alone is inadequate in an period of geopolitical competitors, the report implicitly acknowledges that extraterritorial affect operates by means of materials leverage market measurement, infrastructural centrality, and dependency. This acknowledgement renders more and more untenable the declare that Europe’s international regulatory results are purely normative or unintended.

But when comparable methods are pursued by non-European actors, they’re narrated in basically totally different phrases. China’s digital infrastructure investments throughout Southeast Asia and Africa below the Digital Silk Street are regularly characterised as vectors of geopolitical affect or “smooth colonisation.” India’s data-localisation initiatives and reciprocity-based information entry preparations are framed as makes an attempt to exert undue management over info flows. In these accounts, conditional market entry and infrastructural dependency sign domination somewhat than governance.

What distinguishes these circumstances will not be the existence of extraterritorial impact, GDPR itself operates by means of exactly such results, however the normative narrative hooked up to energy. European extraterritoriality is naturalized by means of the language of universality and rights; non-European extraterritoriality is problematized by means of the language of affect and coercion. The Draghi Report exposes this asymmetry by brazenly situating European regulatory authority inside a broader technique of financial and geopolitical energy, at the same time as international discourse continues to disclaim equal legitimacy to others.

This selective framing narrows the area for regulatory pluralism. By obscuring the facility dynamics underlying Europe’s personal extraterritorial attain, it reinforces a hierarchy during which solely sure actors are approved to outline international public curiosity, whereas others are solid as threats to it. In doing so, it undermines the credibility of claims that Europe’s digital governance mannequin is universally relevant somewhat than traditionally contingent.

Industrial Coverage and Innovation: A Selective Lens

Europe’s renewed embrace of business coverage completes the hypocrisy loop that the Draghi Report brings into sharp focus. The report explicitly endorses public intervention, strategic funding, and coordinated state motion as indispensable to securing Europe’s technological future. Industrial coverage is not framed as an exception to market governance however as a structural necessity in an setting outlined by platform focus, supply-chain vulnerability, and geopolitical rivalry.

This shift is already seen throughout EU digital coverage. Horizon Europe and Digital Europe channel substantial public funding into analysis, startups, and strategic applied sciences. The EU Chips Act institutionalizes state help flexibility and public-private coordination to construct semiconductor capability. IPCEIs in microelectronics and cloud infrastructure formalise large-scale market intervention as a professional governance software. These initiatives mirror a transparent coverage consensus: with out deliberate capacity-building, Europe can not train significant regulatory or strategic autonomy.

GAIA-X gives a very instructive instance. Conceived as a federated European cloud infrastructure, GAIA-X sought to ascertain shared requirements, interoperability necessities, and governance guidelines that would scale back dependence on non-European hyperscalers. Though its implementation has been uneven and its governance contested, the venture nonetheless embodies a distinctly interventionist logic: that management over digital infrastructure is simply too vital to be left completely to international market forces. In different phrases, GAIA-X operationalises the very precept the Draghi Report articulates strategic autonomy requires public coordination and normative steering of infrastructure.

Crucially, this European flip towards industrial coverage is extensively framed as pragmatic realism. Even the place these interventions distort markets or privilege home actors, they’re defended as proportionate responses to structural drawback. The identical generosity of interpretation, nonetheless, hardly ever extends to innovation infrastructures developed elsewhere.

India’s digital public infrastructure Aadhaar, UPI, and the broader India Stack has created interoperable public digital rails that allow competitors, cut back entry obstacles, and ship providers at inhabitants scale. But worldwide commentary regularly frames these programs as technocratic overreach, latent surveillance architectures, or deviations from liberal market rules. Brazil’s nationwide AI technique, which explicitly combines industrial improvement with moral safeguards, is commonly diminished to issues about localization and state management. African and Southeast Asian efforts to manage platforms or construct home digital capability are equally dismissed as untimely or distortive.

The irony, made seen by the Draghi Report, is that Europe is now pursuing substantively comparable methods below the banner of competitiveness and resilience. What differs will not be the coverage instrument, however the attribution of legitimacy. European industrial coverage is narrated as strategic sophistication; International South industrial coverage is narrated as techno-nationalism.

This selective lens reproduces a worldwide hierarchy of innovation authority. It positions Europe as a professional architect of digital futures, whereas confining others to the position of adopters or dangers to be managed. By doing so, it obscures the extent to which Europe’s personal regulatory ambitions more and more rely on the identical types of state intervention which have lengthy been stigmatized elsewhere.

Towards a Multidimensional Digital Symphony

Dominant international digital governance discourse continues to border regulatory ambition within the International South as a risk somewhat than a useful resource. By doing so, it confines these states to the position of rule-takers: customers of applied sciences, requirements, and governance fashions developed elsewhere, somewhat than equal individuals in shaping the digital order. This positioning does greater than misinterpret intent. It actively constrains home innovation ecosystems, discourages regulatory experimentation, and pushes huge reserves of institutional capability, technical experience, and inventive labour to the margins of their very own technological futures.

Throughout a number of domains of digital governance, the identical narrative sample repeats itself. Sovereignty turns into nationalism when asserted exterior Europe. Extraterritorial regulation turns into “smooth colonisation” when exercised by non-European actors. Public intervention is reframed as overregulation, social safety as ideological extra, and industrial technique as retreat from globalization. In the meantime, when the European Union adopts substantively comparable measures, commentators describe them as rational, rights-based, and forward-looking. These should not remoted mischaracterisations. They mirror a sturdy hierarchy of normative legitimacy sustained by historic energy asymmetries and epistemic privilege. Whereas European coverage discourse usually invokes inner market specificity to justify intervention, the worldwide attain and exterior results of EU regulatory decisions inform a unique story.

The Draghi Report on European Competitiveness brings this asymmetry into sharp reduction. By brazenly acknowledging that Europe can not depend on regulatory authority alone, the report normalizes large-scale industrial coverage, strategic funding, and coordinated state motion as circumstances for technological survival. It frames public intervention, focused subsidies, and deliberate capacity-building not as market distortions, however as existential responses to geopolitical competitors and technological focus. But these prescriptions carefully mirror the methods state-backed infrastructure, conditional market entry, strategic autonomy that International South governments have pursued for years and for which they’ve been persistently criticised. When Europe adopts these instruments, observers recast them as pragmatic realism; when others deploy them, the identical observers denounce them as techno-nationalism. On this sense, the Draghi Report doesn’t merely sign a coverage shift. It exposes the normative inconsistency on the coronary heart of prevailing international digital governance discourse: intervention good points legitimacy from origin, not substance.

If this discursive asymmetry persists, its penalties will intensify. Because the EU deepens its flip towards anticipatory regulation and industrial technique, the hole between regulatory follow and evaluative judgment will widen additional. International South regulators will more and more face a paradoxical setting during which worldwide actors encourage them to emulate European ambition whereas penalizing them politically, economically, and reputationally for doing so. These dynamic dangers produce two destabilizing responses. Some states could under-regulate to keep away from backlash, entrenching platform energy and social hurt. Others could pursue aggressive localization and unilateral management, accelerating geopolitical and technological fragmentation. In each circumstances, the credibility of “international” digital governance erodes when legitimacy attaches to geography somewhat than to the standard, proportionality, or goals of regulation. Appeals to harmonization and shared requirements lose power when solely sure actors retain the authority to outline collective threat and public curiosity.

On the identical time, this second creates a gap. As regulatory experimentation accelerates throughout jurisdictions, the bounds of a Eurocentric evaluative framework turn out to be more and more seen. The way forward for digital governance won’t emerge from unilateral standard-setting alone, however from negotiated coexistence amongst numerous regulatory fashions formed by totally different financial circumstances, political priorities, and developmental trajectories. Whether or not policymakers deal with this plurality as an issue to be disciplined or as a useful resource to be cultivated will decide whether or not the following section of digital regulation reproduces current hierarchies or begins to dismantle them.

Solely by confronting these asymmetries instantly can digital sovereignty transfer past its colonial echoes and performance as a shared precept of collective self-determination. When any state no matter historical past or geography asserts claims over information rights, platform accountability, or anticipatory governance, policymakers ought to acknowledge these claims not as disruptive outliers, however as contributions to a resilient and plural digital polity. In such a future, sovereignty ceases to function as a privilege reserved for the few and as a substitute turns into a residing proper exercised by the various.

[1] On this put up, the International South is used broadly to confer with economically creating nations, normally former colonies in Asia, Africa, or Latin America. These are sometimes forgotten in mainstream conversations and are academically underrepresented.

Pratiksha is a Publish Doctoral Researcher at Tilburg College for the EU Horizon 2020 venture AI4POL and is affiliated with Tilburg Institute for Regulation, Expertise, and Society (TILT) and Tilburg Regulation and Economics Heart (TILEC). Her analysis pursuits embody digital regulation, information and shopper legislation, AI and regulation, comparative legislation, and international research with views from the International South.