Open plurilateral agreements to support digital trade

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• GGP: Global Governance Programme

This workshop examines two frameworks that seek to balance rules for digital trade including the protection of privacy and support for cross-border data flows

Regulation of the digital economy and cross-border movement of data is rapidly evolving at the domestic level and is becoming an element of new trade agreements. National laws and bilateral or plurilateral agreements on digital trade impact cross-border service providers, potentially leading to discriminatory treatment and trade diversion, increasing compliance costs for international firms, and affecting digitalisation processes. Pursuit of equivalence regimes that go beyond bilateral initiatives and move towards a global regulatory framework would create a more conducive environment for trade.

This workshop examines two frameworks that seek to balance rules for digital trade including the protection of privacy and support for cross-border data flows: (1) the Digital Economy Partnership Agreement (DEPA) and (2) European Union adequacy decisions allowing the movement of personal data between the EU and third countries.

DEPA is a plurilateral agreement between Chile, New Zealand and Singapore focused on digital trade and data flows. It is designed to be open: an explicit aim of signatories is to encourage expansion of membership to include other countries.

The EU’s adequacy framework aims to protect privacy when data moves from one country to another. It is operationalised through decisions that grant a ‘third country, a territory or one or more specified sectors within the third country, or international organisations’ the rights to transfer ‘personal data which are undergoing or are intended for processing after the transfer to a third country or to an international organisation’. The EU framework is dyadic, not plurilateral, with adequacy determined unilaterally by the EU.