The European Union has produced digital legislation at an astonishing rate, both regulating to control existing technological phenomena – such as AI – and to shape specific social constructs built upon technical phenomena – such as the European Health Data Space. Perhaps more than ever, EU digital frameworks are expected to cast regulatory shadows across the world. 

However, while the Brussels effect may have proliferated specific privacy and data protection practices worldwide, it also risks reinforcing existing global power dynamics. Stringent EU data export rules can, for example, hinder the competitiveness of the Global South. Besides, many other actors shape digitalisation in very different ways, especially in times of geopolitical change. In such a context, can we expect the norm-setting, global influence of European legislation in the data protection and privacy fields to be paralleled and even strengthened in related digital legislation areas?

The Brussels effect of AI regulation may be blunted by the complexity and diversity of the governance arrangements that are created through political processes at many levels, from the local to the global. These may cut across the high aims and stringent rules adopted in Brussels, and lead to a false sense of security and lack of public confidence in the safeguarding of information rights and other values in an AI driven world. Challenges for privacy and data protection are complicated further by surveillance and data grabbing practices that constrain policymakers, industry and other digital actors. Consumer expectations and technological innovations also have a role to play. To navigate these complexities, perhaps more than ever, and in more than one way, legislators, governments, regulators, data protection officers, civil society, industry and academia across the globe are watching the digital world, and each other.