ITIF filed comments advising the Commission not to introduce such a tax. ITIF explained the many reasons why the planned digital levy is a misguided recommendation, and urged the Commission pursue a more reasonable path:
Europe
February 8, 2021
The DGA is a positive step forward in outlining a framework to enhance data sharing in the EU and promote data-driven innovation, however further clarification will be necessary to ensure data protection and competition laws do not prevent firms from sharing data, to safeguard trade with non-EU countries, and to prevent the public sector from charging excessive fees for data access.
February 4, 2021
The Center for Data Innovation welcomes the goals of the EHDS initiative and agrees that adopting measures to enable better data exchange will facilitate artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled healthcare applications in the EU and allow firms to pursue economies of scale across EU markets.
January 29, 2021
Organizational efficiencies should not be an opportunity to enforce precautionary measures in innovation markets.
January 25, 2021
The Commission’s inception impact assessment envisages the possibility of no longer enforcing competition laws with respect to independent platform workers in order to improve their working conditions. The four options identified by the European Commission are misguided and detrimental to consumers, platform workers, and innovation. ITIF articulates 10 better ways to improve the working conditions of economically vulnerable platform workers while preserving the proper enforcement of EU competition laws in a fast-changing and highly innovative digital platform economy.
December 17, 2020
WASHINGTON—Upon the European Court of Justice’s invalidation of the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield, Standard Contractual Clauses (SCCs) or “model contracts” have remained the only scalable and widely accessible legal tool available to organizations transferring personal data from the European Union to the United States and most of the rest of the world.
December 17, 2020
SCCs are a widely used legal tool to transfer personal data out of the EU, but courts and regulators are making them costlier and more complex. This is a sign of Europe’s march toward de facto data localization—a threat to transatlantic digital trade that policymakers must avoid.
December 4, 2020
The EU and the United States should come to an agreement: Both nations will agree that the EU can engage in protectionist digital industrial policies only when and if the ratio between the trade deficit in IT/services is at least 10 percent the trade deficit in goods.
December 3, 2020
The EU-U.S. Privacy Shield’s demise affects thousands of firms that relied on it to transfer data. Policymakers should realize the enormous trade and innovation stakes involved—both bilateral and global—and build an improved framework for data protection and digital trade.
December 1, 2020
ITIF’s Center for Data Innovation hosted a high-level forum to connect stakeholders working to promote AI in Europe, showcase advances in AI, and promote AI policies supporting its development to EU policymakers and thought leaders.
November 30, 2020
Research spending unfortunately is seen by many as an “add-on” rather than an essential economic driver, so it is not prioritized in times of crisis such as the pandemic, even though research is crucial to developing a COVID vaccine.
November 30, 2020
The principle of legal certainty states that the law must be sufficiently clear to provide those who are subject to it with the possibility of regulating their conduct accordingly. Unfortunately, the issue of legal certainty in the discussions and proceedings against big tech has mostly been overlooked despite its fundamental importance in preserving the optimal incentives for market players.
October 28, 2020
The European Commission has failed to allocate anywhere near the level of financial support that will be necessary to meaningfully accelerate clean energy innovation.
October 1, 2020
According to DuckDuckGo, Google’s auction method for determining which search engines appear in the preference menu is a “pay-to-play” system that prices some search engines, like itself, out of the market. There are several flaws in DuckDuckGo’s arguments.
September 28, 2020
The European Commission plans to propose a new Digital Services Act – the legislation that could revise or repeal the e-Commerce Directive and create a new set of regulations for Internet intermediaries. The goal of the legislation is to create clearer and more harmonised rules for digital services and address concerns about illegal and harmful online content, while protecting digital innovation and free expression.
September 14, 2020
Threatening to make it harder for the U.K. to engage in digital trade with the EU is a misguided move that will cause the EU to only fall further behind in the digital economy. To stay competitive post-Brexit and in the digital economy, the EU should ensure its data protection framework facilitates rather than obstructs data transfers with the U.K. and allow easier international transfers with more countries.
September 11, 2020
By disincentivizing the use of short-term rental platforms, European policymakers are hurting the competitiveness of the overall European economy, negatively impacting the goals of the economic recovery, consumer choice, and welfare.
September 10, 2020
ITIF's Center for Data Innovation submitted feedback to the European Commission’s roadmap titled “Inception Impact Assessment: Proposal for a legal act of the European Parliament and the Council laying down requirements for Artificial Intelligence.”
September 10, 2020
Lagging in the global technological race and caught between a U.S.-China rivalry, the European Union has been working to develop its own capacities in a number of key emerging technologies such as cybersecurity, AI, quantum computing, and, not least of all, 5G. This next-generation wireless standard will be one of the pillars of the future digital economy, but it faces fraught geopolitical challenges that deserve a broadly coordinated policy.
September 8, 2020
Despite the fact the WTO has consistently ruled against Europe’s launch aid practices, the European Union has continued to use the practice on subsequent generations of aircraft.
September 2, 2020
In a response for the European Commission’s public consultation on its “white paper on levelling the playing field as regards foreign subsidies,” ITIF agreed there is a need for new legal instruments to address distortions of the internal market arising from subsidies granted by non-EU authorities.
August 30, 2020
ITIF's Center for Data Innovation submitted feedback to the European Commission’s roadmap titled “Inception Impact Assessment for Revision of the eIDAS Regulation – European Digital Identity (EUid).”
July 31, 2020
The Center for Data Innovation submitted feedback to the European Commission’s roadmap titled “Legislative framework for the governance of common European data spaces.”
July 13, 2020
The European Union’s future prosperity is heavily reliant on it maintaining its status as a leader in the automotive industry. Indeed, the sector directly and indirectly accounts for more than six percent of EU employment, and the turnover it generates represents over seven percent of its gross domestic product.
July 13, 2020
A major study from 2016 that found that Chinese imports increased European patent growth up to 30 percent between 1996-2005 had major coding flaws. The correct data show negative & insignificant changes due to Chinese competition.