Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the book, New Technologies and EU Law. It presents the questions addressed in the book, its organization, and key themes. It argues that we can identify three characteristics of the EU’s approach to law and technology: first, the dominance of a procedural over a substantive approach; second, the EU’s embrace of a risk-based approach to science or technology-based regulation; and third, the tendency to depoliticize debate over new technologies, to present the problems they may raise as essentially technocratic or as primarily concerned with managing access to markets. The chapter then considers rationales for EU regulation of new technologies even where, as in the case of health technologies, EU competence appears limited, and the interplay between the different actors and interests involved, including the courts.