The Digital Challenge for Europe

The impact of digitalization on people and society has become so large that we are talking about a massive digital change of society. Every person, rich or poor, every organization, every country, is profoundly affected by digitalization. Thousands of companies are going through digital transformation processes, to adjust their business model to the digital world in which you can only keep up if you operate internationally, through the Internet. No one can do without a smartphone and access to the Internet anymore. Social media have a major impact on everyone's life, including politics.

Just like the industrial society had to be governed differently from the peasant society that preceded it, the digital world increasingly demands other forms of governance. Traditional laws no longer function properly, governments are losing grip on social media and the Internet, tech giants increasingly dominate the digital playing field, economies are rapidly changing from traditional to digital and cybercrime is given free rein. Digitalization also offers excellent opportunities to achieve the necessary global changes and improvements in numerous areas, such as migration, climate, good education and good healthcare for all. 

After extensive analysis of what is changing as a result of digitalization, this book takes an in-depth look at possible new forms of governance in the digital world. Europe has been taken as the starting point. First of all, because the author is most familiar with the state of the art in Europe, but also because Europe has already been taking a number of important initiatives in the field of digital legislation. Nevertheless, Europe is in many ways  still very much behind large countries such as the US and China. This book makes numerous suggestions to strengthen the European digital position in the years to come. This is badly needed for the future prosperity of Europeans and for Europe's position in the world.