Institutional Gaps of the Protection of the European Citizens’ Personal Data: For a “Rights-Based Digital Sovereignty”

Europe has affirmed a model of data governance with higher standards for the protection of the rights of the European citizens that distinguishes its market at the worldwide level. At the same time, this model can cope with the biggest high-tech players without hindering the business based on data, that today has become the major asset in our economies. Owing to the creation of effective institutions in the data protection, this model has showed to be able to affirm also an alternative model of innovation and of business, able to influence and orient the Silicon Valley companies and impact the rising sharing economy. However, the globalisation of the data circulation has proved that at the institutional level there is also the need of strategic policies for the creation of European infrastructures for the management of data since this directly affects the application of regulations on data. For instance, China has paid a great attention on the location of servers and databases and on the construction of its data sovereignty despite an atypical model of protection of privacy that is strong with the private sector and almost inexistent with regard to the public sector. The European market instead is characterised by a weak sovereignty on its data in front of a data market that often tends to send the data abroad where the laws on data are weaker and standards are much lower. This has led to an increasing pressure towards the policies amending of the European legislation on data (e.g. the Directive on the secondary use, the Chat control 2.0 proposal etc.). The major challenge for the European Union now is thus to invest on its institutional assets, building the conditions for its data sovereignty without dismantling its regulation on data but creating a better integration between these.