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1. China's Data Strategy: Creating a state-led market

Author:
Camille Boullenois
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
In 2019 and 2020, the European Union, the United Kingdom and the United States issued strategy papers on data governance acknowledging the importance of data to their economic development and national security. With different emphases, four competing objectives dominate these data strategies: innovation (using data to create new business models and boost economic growth); security (ensuring that sensitive data is not used by a hostile foreign power); privacy (protecting citizens from abusive use of personal data); and surveillance (using data to monitor and control citizens’ and companies’ behaviour). In the past two years, China has been defining its own data strategy and governance regime and, while juggling the same four competing objectives as its Western counterparts, is taking an innovative approach. While the specific data governance framework is still being debated among scholars, policymakers, industrial lobbyists and state institutions, local pilot regulations on data and stakeholders’ public positions have already hinted at its future characteristics. This Brief aims to shed light on these debates over China’s emerging data governance framework. It starts by describing the objectives of the framework, then summarises the debates around the new data rights that Chinese policymakers are establishing and analyses China’s first local pilot regulations defining those rights. The Brief then focuses specifically on health data to illustrate how China'sdata governance regime is designed to work. Finally, the Brief gives an overview of the challenges that China’s data governance framework presents for EU governments and companies. Ultimately, China’s data governance regime will have important implications for the protection of EU citizens’ data and creates a risk of data protectionism. It is therefore crucial that the EU understands early enough the direction that China is taking, so that it can respond appropriately.
Topic:
Governance, European Union, Transnational Actors, and Data
Political Geography:
China and Asia

2. Creativity Wanted: Countering the extraterritorial effects of US sanctions

Author:
Clara Portela
Publication Date:
10-2021
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
Scarcely familiar with sanctions as a policy tool, much of the European public has followed the headlines about international sanctions with some puzzlement. After the UN lifted sanctions on Iran following the conclusion of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), why was it necessary to create a channel for bilateral trade, the Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX), following the US withdrawal from the deal in 2018? Why is Iran insisting that the US lift sanctions ‘in practice, not verbally or on paper’? How did the US Senate approval of new legislation targeting Nord Stream 2, a pipeline under construction between Russia and Germany, bring work to an immediate standstill in late 2019? Why do European banks and private companies fear the US Department of the Treasury’s sanctions enforcement agency, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC)? If sanctions regimes are endowed with humanitarian exemptions, why do humanitarian agencies report difficulties in getting aid to places like Syria ? As it turns out, these are ramifications of the same phenomenon: the extraterritorial effects of US sanctions. The present Brief examines these effects, describing why they pose a challenge to the EU. It then outlines the responses that have been activated or are being contemplated to counter them, explaining why an effective remedy remains elusive. The Brief concludes by indicating possible ways forward.
Topic:
Humanitarian Aid, United Nations, Sanctions, and Transnational Actors
Political Geography:
Iran, Middle East, Syria, and North America

3. A Blacklist is (Almost) Born: Building a resilient EU human rights sanctions regime

Author:
Clara Portela
Publication Date:
03-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
In December 2018, the Council of the European Union initiated discussions about the creation of a new sanctions regime designed to address gross human rights violations, following a proposal from the Netherlands. So far, the EU only operates three thematic sanctions regimes: those targeting terrorism, cyberattacks and chemical weapons attacks. Unlike classical sanctions packages addressing crises in specific countries, such as Guinea or Venezuela, horizontal sanctions regimes apply to individuals and entities considered to have committed severe human rights abuses. Once approved, the planned blacklist is set to become the EU’s fourth horizontal sanctions regime, enlarging its vast body of autonomous sanctions regimes, i.e. restrictions adopted in the absence of a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) mandate. Over a year after the initial Dutch proposal was tabled, the sanctions regime is still under discussion, which contrasts with the rapid adoption of previous thematic regimes. On first inspection, the slow pace of preparations is puzzling: the vast majority of EU sanctions regimes were traditionally imposed in response to human rights breaches.3 Most EU autonomous sanctions regimes currently in force cite human rights violations as the rationale for their adoption. Indeed, the emphasis on human rights as a key motivation for the imposition of sanctions sets EU autonomous sanctions apart from the practice of other international sanctions senders like the United Nations (UN).4 Given that the promotion of human rights is a centrepiece of EU foreign policy, consensus among member states in support of such a regime should be forthcoming. If human rights breaches constitute the dominant motivation for the imposition of EU autonomous sanctions, what is holding up the approval of the prospective regime? Designing a horizontal sanctions regime in the EU is a much harder task than meets the eye. The present Brief aims to unravel the challenges that make it difficult for this regime to take shape, and suggests ways in which the obstacles identified may be surmounted or, at the very least, mitigated.
Topic:
Human Rights, Sanctions, European Union, and Transnational Actors
Political Geography:
Europe and Global Focus

4. Cyber Conflict Uncoded: The EU and conflict prevention in cyberspace

Author:
Patryk Pawlak, Eneken Tikk, and Mika Kerttunen
Publication Date:
04-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
When the Supreme Leader of Iran promised revenge in response to the killing of General Suleimani in January 2020, the possibility of offensive cyber operations against US targets was suggested. Eventually, Iran resorted to a more conventional response, launching missiles against US military bases in Iraq. However, this episode points to a shift in our understanding of what conflict means. In January 2019, the French Minister of Armed Forces, Florence Parly, stated that “cyber warfare has begun and France must be ready to fight it” as she announced the new French Military Cyber Strategy. In a similar vein, the UK Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Carter, announced in September 2019 that Britain is “at war every day” due to constant cyber-attacks from Russia and elsewhere and warned that with the evolving character of warfare, the distinction between peace and war no longer exists in the modern world. The proliferation of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), both the expansion of usage and the increased availability of harmful means, has brought about new ways of power projection. Political and economic contestation between states now involves targeted cyber-attacks against other countries’ utilities, financial networks, election infrastructure and governance systems. Cyber-attacks – a deliberate use of malicious software for exploiting or altering computer code, data or logic to cause harm – offer new methods to target internet infrastructure, telecommunications networks, information systems, as well as computers and computer systems. Such activities might have the objective of destroying or affecting the proper functioning of these systems with adverse effects for their users – whether states, companies, public service providers or individuals. As a result, power projection does not have to involve tanks or missiles; nor does it have to result in direct death and destruction comparable to armed conflict. Confrontation is, however, a constant in states’ ambitions, attitudes and capabilities, blurring the line between war and peace. This Conflict Series Brief examines the current practices and future possibilities of preventive action in relation to conflict in cyberspace. When categorising state uses of ICTs as a form of conflict, attention should be paid to three considerations. First, hostile uses of ICTs rarely occur outside of a pre-existing or broader politico-military dispute. Second, a malicious state use of ICTs can lead to an escalation in pre-existing adversarial relations. Third, the use of cyber capabilities in a conflict situation often includes the targeting of civilian infrastructure and therefore has wide-ranging implications for the proper functioning of societies. Against this background, this Brief argues that the use of malicious cyber tools for power projection can and must be prevented.
Topic:
European Union, Cybersecurity, Conflict, Transnational Actors, and Information Technology
Political Geography:
Europe

5. Who's First Wins? International crisis response to Covid-19

Author:
Florence Gaub and Lotje Boswinkel
Publication Date:
05-2020
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
European Union Institute for Security Studies
Abstract:
The Covid-19 pandemic appears to be not just a test for healthcare systems around the world, but an international contest for which country has the best political system. As the People’s Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), boasted in an article published in early March, “China’s battle against the epidemic showed that the CCP, as China’s ruling party, is by far the political party with the strongest governance capability in human history.”1 It pointed the finger at Europe for “acting too little and too late, and largely failing to stem the tide”.2 Slow response time, high rates of transmission, and a general unwillingness to impose restrictive emergency measures were ascribed to the inherent deficiencies of open democratic, liberal systems, making them appear unfit to deal with health crises or indeed for governance generally. In this Brief, we put this hypothesis to the test: did democracies really respond less swiftly than authoritarian systems – and if the determining factor is not the political system, what are the key elements in crisis response?
Topic:
Transnational Actors, Crisis Management, COVID-19, and Strategic Interests
Political Geography:
Global Focus