EU Digital Simplification Omnibus

The new simplification omnibus of the EU Commission can be found here. 

Based on feedback from three public consultations, the digital package will set out the EU Commission’s simplification agenda for the years to come and will include a digital omnibus with an initial set of measures to quickly reduce the burden on businesses, focusing on data legislation (including rules on cookies and other tracking technologies), cybersecurity incident reporting, and targeted adjustments to the Artificial Intelligence Act to ensure the optimal application of the rules; Topic: Digital economy and society; Type of act: Proposal for a regulation; Category: Commission Work Programme (REFIT).

The assumption that the EU has an advantage in competing with actual or quasi-dictatorships is terminally flawed. To create a new market niche, any new regulation must end dependency on these illiberal nations and establish a European cloud, data-protection and AI regime that ensures growth through localisation. Unless Europe creates a regulatory framework that moves away from illiberal influence, there can be no real growth in Europe, as all processes in a globalised economy will ultimately be weakened to comply with the monopolists and autocrats in these illiberal nations. We need to move away from global dependencies. Then new businesses could open that fill the monopolised niches held by these monopolists. You can still make processes more business-friendly, but ultimately, allowing globalised illiberal nations to operate in the EU cannot lead to anything but the adaptation of their autocratic rulebooks and their continued interference with liberal democracy. Growth can now only be achieved locally, by creating a more protectionist environment. The idea that growth can be achieved by containing these hostile actors through weak legislation has proved unachievable when international actors do not respect the rule of law in the EU. This would open the marketplace to new businesses creating cloud services, AI services and social networks that are not hostile, anti-democratic spaces. Yes, this more protectionist process would be painful, but so is the continued attack Europe is under by illiberal forces seeking to dilute, interfere with and ultimately destroy democratic ideas that have been hard-fought, with great loss of life. Ultimately, no European company can win in a market space where the other parties do not follow the rules. No one would play chess in which the other party can move pieces as they please and ignore the referee. Such players would be banned, and that is what has to happen to regain a fair marketplace. Not by diluting regulation, but by strict enforcement on international players. In this new safe space, one can still make business processes simpler.