Lost on the digital platform: Europe’s legal travails with the Digital Single Market

Abstract

The regulatory approach to tech companies in the internal market is in the process of being rebalanced from maximizing economic benefits to minimizing social and political costs. The article analyses this trend, and the reasons for the change. It recapitulates the main economic and political benefits, as well as the costs of establishing a European market for online activities, then discusses the outcome of the positive integration in this domain before and after the 2015 Digital Single Market Strategy. The ECJ’s stance in the recent cases on Uber is explained, followed by an elucidation of shortcomings in the legal arguments underpinning these decisions. The conclusions emphasize that the current approach to the Digital Single Market – both for positive and negative integration – might cripple the internal market profoundly. If so, the cleavage between countries able to take advantage of the digital revolution and those unable to do so will widen.