European Union's digital governance versus United States' digital dominance

Since the launch of the Lisbon strategy in 2000, the EU’s industrial policy goals have targeted the provision of an efficient environment for R&D investors, greater innovation and development of knowledge-intensive sectors. The Lisbon strategy acknowledged the competitive edge in high-tech & digital industries gained by US champions in the 1980s/1990s. However, neither the implementation of the Lisbon strategy nor the following agenda 2020 have succeeded in achieving increased R&D spending and generating significantly robust EU-based companies in ICT sectors that could compete with US firms. Conversely, there is a growing competitiveness gap between EU and US ICT firms that dominate EU markets. Meanwhile, the European Commission pushed by some key Member States has taken a series of regulatory initiatives presented as measures to ensure a level playing field on EU’s digital internal market. This paper will demonstrate that the EU inability to catch up with US digital advance has led European institutions to increasingly use regulations as defensive and indirect industrial policy tools to protect the EU market against US tech giants and to provide EU companies with more favourable conditions to enter the digital race and in particular to jump on the Internet of Things’ bandwagon.