Platform Economy and Product Liability: Old Rules for New Markets

According to statistics, Amazon is one of the most-used online marketplaces worldwide. The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns to reduce the spread of the virus have shown how critical online marketplaces are to enable e-commerce and keep commercial transactions alive, especially in such times when regular commerce is disrupted. However, when we buy online, we have no chance of examining whether the product works or whether it is defective. If something goes wrong when we buy a product from a third-party seller through Amazon, as consumers, we then face the challenge of trying to file a claim for the damages that might have arisen due to the defectiveness of the product. This article explores Amazon’s position in this scenario, with reference to the case law from both US and EU courts and regulations, not solely from the point of view of Product Liability Law, but also according to the E-Commerce Directive liability.

The European Approach to Building AI Policy and Governance: A Haven for Bureaucrats or Innovators?

Disruptive technologies and the domination of digital platforms have challenged the global economy players twice — first, to get a hand on them, then to mitigate the possible risks. It is beyond doubt that reliable artificial intelligence (AI) can bring many benefits at the European level, such as better health care, safer and cleaner transport, more efficient manufacturing, and sustainable energy. But regulating the unknown requires considerable effort on how to attract investors using clear rules while keeping human control over the algorithms as a priority. In April 2021, the EU Commission published a holistic proposal to regulate the use of AI, which promises to put trust first and ensure that facial recognition and big data operators will never abuse fundamental human rights. Although the proposal is likely to be amended during EU-wide discussions, the new approach to AI will clearly give citizens the reassurance to adopt these technologies while encouraging companies to develop them. Hence, this article aims to map the core challenges for the EU policy on the use of AI, as well as the milestones of developing the holistic legislative proposal, and clarify if the afore-mentioned proposal indeed solves all the AI-related risks for future generations.

EU cybersecurity and cyber diplomacy

Over the last decades cybersecurity has become a cornerstone of European digital development. Alongside with the diffusion of information and communication technologies and the deepening (as well as widening) of the European Union, the initial narrow and sectoral data security policies have expanded into a comprehensive cybersecurity framework addressing issues from resilient infrastructure and technological sovereignty, through tackling cybercrime, to cyber defence capabilities and responsible state behaviour in cyberspace. In this complex web of interrelated policies a relative newcomer at the European Union (EU) level is cyber diplomacy. Sometimes also called public diplomacy 2.0, it factors into the cross-border connectivity of cyberspace and reflects a shift in international relations where the lines between external and internal policies, military and civilian domains are blurred. However, the term cyber diplomacy is fluid and it is not well understood which topics should be under its “umbrella”, in particular in relation to cybersecurity, where it seems to be linked the most. This article aims to map existing and proposed instruments that make up the EU’s arsenal in this broad context to answer the following questions: what is cyber diplomacy and how is it related to the EU cybersecurity? Is cyber diplomacy in the EU becoming something in its own right as a distinct set of tools to secure the EU policy objectives?

La «Década Digital» de la Unión Europea: desarrollos e impactos sobre su ciudadanía y economía

La Unión Europea (UE) es una organización en continua evolución desde su creación a mediados del siglo XX. Su capacidad de adaptación a las necesidades generadas por el proceso de integración es encomiable. La UE ha superado obstáculos imponentes, como la crisis derivada del rechazo a la Comunidad Europea de Defensa y la Unión Política Europea; la activa oposición de un titán político como el presidente francés, De Gaulle; diversas crisis económicas y monetarias; el Brexit y el auge del populismo. Constantemente, la UE ha superado las crisis que le afectaban con la introducción de elementos estabilizadores comunes introducidos por el proceso de integración, creando más Europa. En la actualidad se enfrenta a un nuevo reto, la adaptación a un progreso tecnológico brutal que influirá en el modelo de sociedad imperante en las próximas décadas. Ante este reto, la UE pretende crear un Mercado Único Digital europeo, entre otras iniciativas, que evidentemente tendrá una influencia substancial en las relaciones económicas entre sus miembros y a escala internacional. Esta investigación se centra en el análisis del desarrollo europeo en torno al mundo digital y su influencia en la propia esencia de la organización.

Ethics and emerging technologies – facial recognition

Emerging technologies and digitalization have an increasing impact on our everyday lives. New technology solutions offer a variety of opportunities to our society, yet the ethical implications of this process have long been discussed by scholars in order to fully understand what the potential ethical risks are. One of such technologies is facial recognition. This article intends to contribute to the above indicated scholarly discussion by analyzing recent developments in the field, focusing on facial recognition.

Is the EU human rights legal framework able to cope with discriminatory AI?

The challenges introduced by AI for the EU anti-discrimination legal framework have been a widely discussed topic among the doctrine. In the light of the 20th anniversary of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Commission released a regulatory proposal to tackle AI. This paper seeks to determine whether the proposal successfully addresses the existent pitfalls of the EU framework. First, this paper explores the functioning of AI systems that employ machine learning techniques and determines how discrimination takes place. Second, the article examines intellectual property rights as one of the main barriers for accountability and redressal of violations committed by an AI system. Third, the state of the discussion concerning the pitfalls of the existent EU approach towards non-discrimination is addressed. The available academic literature suggests that discriminatory outputs produced by an AI will amount to indirect discrimination in most scenarios. In this sense, cases of indirect proxy discrimination will likely pass the proportionality test, therefore justifying the discriminatory output. The last section of this article studies the Commission’s regulatory proposal. Although the document seems to effectively tackle discrimination caused by biased training data sets, this paper concludes that intellectual property rights and proxy discrimination still constitute significant barriers for the enforcement of anti-discrimination law.

Europe facing the digital challenge: obstacles and solutions

Introductions to the dossier “Europe facing the digital challenge: obstacles and solutions

The digital development of the European Union: data governance aspects of cooperative, connected and automated mobility

This article focuses on the issue of data governance in connected vehicles. Firstly, basic notions of autonomous vehicles are analyzed, and a legal framework is introduced. The European Union aims to create cooperative, connected, and automated mobility based on the cooperation of different inter-connected types of machinery. The essence of the system is data flow in connected vehicles, and the issue represents one of the heavily discussed themes in legal doctrine. Therefore, data governance is further discussed in the article. The final part of the article deals with the issue of responsibility and liability of different actors involved in the processing of personal data according to the General Data Protection Regulation applied to the environment of CAV smart infrastructure.

Intermediary Liability in the EU Digital Common Market

The European Union is committed to its transition towards climate neutrality and digital leadership, and synergies to be created in the EU Digital Common Market provide ample opportunities to achieve these goals: While from an economic perspective, the maximisation of market opportunities and the creation of a globally competitive digital economy are desirable, the transition must be technologically and ecologically sustainable and additionally compatible with established EU consumer protection standards. The latter is especially relevant in terms of the liability of online intermediaries for digital services, taking into account the rapid transformation of the digital architecture and the emergence of new major digital platforms for sales and services. This chapter, which is based on the Bachelor thesis handed in by Sander Sagar and supervised by Thomas Hoffmann for graduation at TalTech Law School, Tallinn University of Technology, intends to elucidate how the transition towards a common digital market is legally established in practice using as an example the adoption of the intermediaries’ liability regime to a digitalized environment from the E-Commerce Directive to the Digital Services Act.

Una aproximación a las limitaciones participativas del civic crowdfunding

En la presente investigación analizamos la dimensión participativa del civic crowdfunding. El objetivo principal es determinar las características y el perfil participativo de la ciudadanía que, a través de aportaciones, contribuye a la financiación de iniciativas de motivación social y cívica. Para ello realizamos un análisis descriptivo a partir de ocho variables que recogen información sobre las particularidades sociodemográficas, las fuentes de información clave para la participación, la experiencia participativa y el grado de conocimiento previo de la entidad promotora. Las variables de estudio se aplican en una muestra de 46 individuos que participaron en alguno de los 27 proyectos de civic crowdfunding y matchfunding de colaboración público-privada alojados en la plataforma Goteo, e incluidos en los programas Crowdfunding ZGZ 2017 y Conjuntament. Desarrollo Económico de Proximidad 2018, promovidos por los Ayuntamientos de Zaragoza y Barcelona. Los resultados muestran un participante tipo conformado de forma hegemónica por personas de género femenino, altamente formadas, con un nivel de renta superior a la media, próximas al colectivo promotor de la causa financiable y con experiencia participativa previa a nivel social, cívico y político. Como conclusión debemos señalar las limitaciones del civic crowdfunding como instrumento participativo para la integración de individuos y grupos sociales ajenos a los procesos sociales y cívicos.