The annual Munich Security Conference on international security and policy took place again last month. Issues related to information and communications security, as well as Internet regulations and policies, have become increasingly important at the conference.
European countries have not only attached great importance to such issues over the past few years, they have also used legislation and policy to find a different approach from the US and China.
At the UN Internet Governance Forum in Paris in November last year, French President Emmanuel Macron stressed that, in contrast with the abuse of personal data in the California-style Internet and the Chinese-style Internet based on totalitarian surveillance and control, the world needs to improve Internet regulations and build a third kind of cyberspace that is safe and trustworthy.
Macron proposed that the international community make rules to ensure a free, open and safe Internet.
The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into effect in May last year is a good indicator, as it has strengthened personal data protection in cyberspace and given ownership of data back to users. After the EU set the tone, even the US has started to discuss whether a privacy protection bill similar to the GDPR is needed.
In 2016, the EU, led by Germany and France, also proposed a controversial draft directive on copyright in the digital single market. Article 11 of the directive requires that Web sites showing link results on their pages pay a “license fee” — also called a “link tax” — to the content providers, and Article 13 requires operators to try their best to prevent content infringements.
Although these seemingly extreme rules might not be passed by the European Parliament, they are a reflection of the EU’s review of Internet development and its ambition to break the rules of the Internet industry, which have long been dominated by the US.
The EU’s attempt to keep its distance from US technology policy is nothing new and it has adopted a set of new strategies connecting it with Asia. It is also paying more attention to and expressing greater friendliness toward Taiwan.
For example, the European Commission released Connecting Europe and Asia: Building blocks for an EU strategy in September last year.
Among several issues, Federica Mogherini, high representative of the EU for foreign affairs and security policy, called on Asian states to deepen cooperation with the EU on digital and energy issues crucial to the development of technology.
In an op-ed piece titled “Connecting Asia-Pacific and Europe” published in the Taipei Times on Oct. 16 last year, Mogherini said: “In the area of collaborative business and innovation, leading Taiwanese chip companies, for instance, participate in Galileo — the global satellite navigation system operated by the EU.”
European wind power companies, Taiwanese and European operators, officials and academics were invited to a public hearing on Taiwan-Europe trade relations held by the European Parliament’s Committee on International Trade.
The hearing has created hope in Taiwan that by linking up the digital and energy high-tech sectors, it might become possible to achieve the difficult task of signing a bilateral trade agreement.
It is clear that as the US and China vie for dominance of the high-tech sector, there is a clear opportunity for Taiwan and Europe to deepen cooperation in the digital and energy sectors.
Chiang Ya-chi is an associate professor at National Taipei University of Technology’s Graduate Institute of Intellectual Property.
Translated by Eddy Chang
Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently described NATO as “the most powerful and successful alliance in history,” but the organization’s early years were not without challenges. At its inception, the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty marked a sea change in American strategic thinking. The United States had been intent on withdrawing from Europe in the years following
My wife and I spent the week in the interior of Taiwan where Shuyuan spent her childhood. In that town there is a street that functions as an open farmer’s market. Walk along that street, as Shuyuan did yesterday, and it is next to impossible to come home empty-handed. Some mangoes that looked vaguely like others we had seen around here ended up on our table. Shuyuan told how she had bought them from a little old farmer woman from the countryside who said the mangoes were from a very old tree she had on her property. The big surprise
The issue of China’s overcapacity has drawn greater global attention recently, with US Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen urging Beijing to address its excess production in key industries during her visit to China last week. Meanwhile in Brussels, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen last week said that Europe must have a tough talk with China on its perceived overcapacity and unfair trade practices. The remarks by Yellen and Von der Leyen come as China’s economy is undergoing a painful transition. Beijing is trying to steer the world’s second-largest economy out of a COVID-19 slump, the property crisis and
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) trip to China provides a pertinent reminder of why Taiwanese protested so vociferously against attempts to force through the cross-strait service trade agreement in 2014 and why, since Ma’s presidential election win in 2012, they have not voted in another Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) candidate. While the nation narrowly avoided tragedy — the treaty would have put Taiwan on the path toward the demobilization of its democracy, which Courtney Donovan Smith wrote about in the Taipei Times in “With the Sunflower movement Taiwan dodged a bullet” — Ma’s political swansong in China, which included fawning dithyrambs