In the European Union, regulations are in place to keep tabs on international data flow. These regulations are in place to promote data security and keep things like national secrets and users’ personal data from falling into the wrong hands. While these regulations serve their purpose, for the most part, they can run afoul of services that make extensive use of wide data transfer, such as services like Google, Uber and Facebook that use A.I. from their home countries or transfer user data and analytics across countries. Regulators received a communication recently, from a number of EU member states, asking to ensure that these protections didn’t end up getting in the way of rolling out futuristic data services.
A laundry list of countries in the EU, including Poland, Britain, Sweden and Finland, urged Brussels to keep regulations loose enough to not damage futuristic data services, and not to implement any universal solutions, regulation-wise, for companies like Facebook and Google. Before it was all said and done, ministers from Britain, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden were on board with asking the commission to keep a lid on regulations and ensure the European Union’s competitiveness in the worldwide data market. The document also mentioned simplifying rules for telecoms to allow for the adoption of futuristic broadband and wireless technologies.
Thankfully, the commission’s VP, Andrus Ansip, had already answered one tenet of the urging by saying that there will be no one-size-fits-all regulations in place. This comes on the heels of the Commission unveiling Digital Single Market, an approach to the worldwide data space that should allow a relatively high degree of adaptibility and future-proofing in the face of current and future regulations. The EU is currently investigating data services and the framework around them and will reveal its findings, as well as any action plans, on Wednesday. A proposal is also in the works, set to be unveiled later in the year, to foster free data flow throughout the EU, even in countries like Germany where data localization is becoming the norm.