EU’s Trade Policy on Cross-Border Data Flows in the Global Landscape: Navigating the Thin Line between Liberalizing Digital Trade, 'Digital Sovereignty' and Multilateralism

This chapter compares the narratives underlying the EU’s approach to governing cross-border data flows and their reflection in the EU’s trade policy with those of the US and China. It demonstrates that, although the policy concerns behind the EU, US and China’s restrictions on data flows are different, the degree of regulatory autonomy these jurisdictions are willing to give up in order to promote cross-border data flows is more similar than is often assumed. The chapter suggests that this convergence could pave the way to a multilateral consensus on data flows at the World Trade Organization and reflects on other implications it might have for the multilateral trading system.