Date: 2021
Type: Working Paper
The discursive performance of EU digital sovereignty : three co-performances
Working Paper, EUI MWP, 2021/07
CONG, Wanshu, The discursive performance of EU digital sovereignty : three co-performances, EUI MWP, 2021/07 - https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73307
Retrieved from Cadmus, EUI Research Repository
Digital sovereignty is now being spoken about regularly at both the EU and member state levels. While the notion expresses the EU’s intention to achieve greater strategic autonomy and reduce external dependency, it has been criticized by commentators for lacking conceptual clarity. This paper argues that precisely because of its conceptual ambiguity, digital sovereignty has become a rich terrain for discursive performances that constitute the EU’s relationship with various actors. This paper examines three discursive co-performances: between the EU and its main international interlocutors, i.e., the US and China, where a certain degree of imitation can be discerned; between the EU and its member states, where both convergence and dissonance of political motivations can be identified; and between the EU and activists for individual digital rights who appropriate the EU’s sovereignty discourse to make it compatible with the rights-centered approach to data governance. These three co-performances reveal various contradictions surrounding digital sovereignty in the European context: the tendency of imitation in the first may undermine rather than reinforce the EU’s autonomy; in the second, below the superficial level of coordination, competing interests of EU member states further fragment the EU’s strategy and approach; in the third, the strategy of appropriation leaves critical questions of authority and representation unanswered, which risks weakening individual digital rights.
Cadmus permanent link: https://hdl.handle.net/1814/73307
ISSN: 1830-7728
Series/Number: EUI MWP; 2021/07
Publisher: European University Institute