En technological matters, is it time for a thaw in relations between Americans and Europeans? A warming seems to be underway: after years of tension centered on the regulation of the American giants Google, Facebook, Amazon or Apple, the surprise announcement, by Washington and Brussels, at the end of March, of a new draft transatlantic transfer agreement personal data, is a symbol. Especially since the deal was accompanied by the announcement of an American gas delivery agreement to reduce dependence on Russia. Without asserting that one was the counterpart of the other, we can see that the context and the war in Ukraine put Europe in the face of the temptation to get closer to the United States in the digital sphere. Can this call into question the third way between “California Internet and Chinese Internet” that Emmanuel Macron had theorized in a speech in November 2018?
“This trend towards rapprochement has taken shape since the height of tensions between China and the United States, around 2019, under the effect, in particular, of the diplomatic efforts of the Americans to try to bring Europe back into their fold. And she should get stronger”, estimated the researcher Julien Nocetti, at the end of April, in an interview with World.
After having been extolled for their contribution to the “Arab Spring”, then pilloried for their invasions of privacy or their impediments to competition, the GAFAs are now trying to rehabilitate themselves as actors playing a role positive in the fight against the Russian and Chinese authoritarian regimes.
“More cooperation”
“The Ukrainian conflict leads people to say that they can only count on themselves, but we can, on the contrary, conclude that we need more collaboration to ensure our military and economic security”, declared, in mid-May, at World, the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, in favor of the rapprochement between Europe and the United States and of the data transfer agreement.
Such an agreement could deprive the defenders of European digital sovereignty of one of their central arguments. Indeed, two previous agreements have been canceled by European justice due to the risk of access to data by US authorities, under extraterritorial laws such as the FISA Intelligence Act. The last invalidation, in mid-2020, prompted the French government to enact its so-called “cloud of trust” doctrine in mid-2021, which obliges administrations and local authorities to host their data with companies governed by French law – while authorizing them to use American software.
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