The EU as an exporter of digital rules and standards? The case of the DSA and the DMA

The extent to which the European Union (EU) has the capacity and the right to export its rules and standards is a topic that has occupied legal doctrine for some time now. It has become of great political and legal salience following President Trump’s reelection and the alignment, behind him, of most US big-tech companies. While the EU itself now questions the General Data Protection Regulation’s ‘global golden standard’ and delays the application of the AIA, the DSA, and the DMA have already led to the first sanctions on US-based platforms. The present article discusses (i) the production of EU rules and standards in the digital field, (ii) the ways in which such rules and standards may be—and are—exported to third countries, and (iii) tries to identify the kinds of extra-territorial effects produced by the DSA and the DMA. It finds that the ‘grand theory’ of extraterritoriality only partly corresponds to the impact produced by these two texts outside the EU. It, thus, shows that extraterritoriality depends on the intent of the legislator, but most importantly, on the regulatory content of each individual text. This article is intended to participate in the broader discussion of the extraterritorial application of EU law and of the ‘Brussels effect’, grounded on two important—yet unexplored—texts of the digital economy.