These days the European Commission for the Digital Agenda is defining the recommendations and rules that will govern the Digital Single Market (DSM) of the twenty-eight European Countries.
The purpose is to allow companies to operate in a digital market that has common rules, remove the fragmentation, which is present in the laws of individual states, and facilitate the use of digital services regardless of national boundaries.
This piece of news is even more topical when we consider the sad events of recent days, when European States, under the growing pressure of asylum seekers, are deciding to close the borders and are thinking over the treaty of Schengen, written to allow free movement of people, goods and ideas inside Europe.
As Andrew Joint said in his article on Techworld, about the European Digital Single Market:
- It will allow better access to online goods and services across Europe.
- It will create the right conditions for the development of digital networks and services.
- It will exploit the full potential of growth of the European “Digital Economy”.
A great help to achieve all these issues will come from the new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Currently many of the companies operating in the digital market are struggling with complicated and obscure rules regarding privacy and protection of personal data, that are different from country to country. They are forced to recall all these rules in pages and pages of clauses to be signed, written in small font, disorienting the customer and increasing his mistrust in purchasing.
GDPR will provide new, clear and unique rules to guarantee consumers and companies, who treat their personal data, fuelling confidence and mutual credit. GDPR is expected to be approved in the next six months and will enter directly into force in the next twenty-four months, without the need of ratification by the national parliaments.
Also the Digital Single Market will enter into force in twelve-eighteen months, as the new privacy rules.
The hope is that this effort of regulations, but also of great market opening, will aid the process of creating a new, open and free Europe in trading and in cooperation between the Member States.