Page - 38 - in Austrian Law Journal, Volume 1/2019

ALJ 2019 Peter Egger et al 38 I. Introduction1 Increasing digitisation poses major challenges not only to the European Single Market, but to the European Union (EU) as a whole. Digitisation offers great opportunities on the one hand, while there is no question that it poses major economic and social challenges on the other hand.2 As the “engine of (digital) integration”,3 the European Commission is endeavouring to find a general policy approach in the field of digitisation and to provide answers to urgent questions.4 One of the central objectives of this approach is to preserve the competitiveness5 of the internal market while respecting the values of the EU.6 The Commission takes various measures to achieve this objective. In some cases, it examines whether existing regulation is sufficient to meet the challenges of digitisation; in other cases the enactment of new, “smart” regulation is on the table. This contribution is a collaboration between legal scholars from different disciplines and a data scientist. It was inspired by the authors’ participation in a seminar organised by the Commission's DG Growth7 which selected the topics according to internal priority. This selection of topics left the authors impressed as it clearly shows that the Commission is focusing on very different areas of law (public regulatory law, private law, administrative law) to meet the challenges of digitisation. While it is quite obvious that the increasing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may require new legal responses (2.) and that smart products are a challenge for product liability law (3.), it may at first sight come as a surprise that the EU recently adopted a new piece of postal legislation to promote the digitisation of the internal market (4.). However, we will show that this measure fits in well with the European Commission's strategy to develop the Digital Single Market. Even though the Digital Single Market is often associated with service providers only, the digital accessibility of the administration can make an important contribution to its establishment. In this respect, the European legislator has lately taken an important step by enacting a Regulation for a Single Digital Gateway (5.). It seems to the authors that the significance of this piece of legislation has not yet become fully visible to the public. This paper aims to give an overview of the above mentioned topics (as selected by the Commission) and their potential legal implications, thus showing that the creation of a Single Digital Market covers far more areas than one might initially assume. It should also be pointed out that, despite digitisation being a European challenge, its implications cannot be analysed from an EU(ropean) perspective only. Country-specific legal requirements have to be taken into account as well. For this reason, some examples will be drawn from the Austrian legal system. 1 Whenever the web address for a newspaper article is provided, the date of access is February 22nd, 2019. 2 According to Harrie Temmink, DG Growth, European Commission, at present the main challenges for the EU are “Digitisation”, “Sustainability” and “Solidarity”. 3 Commission, A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe (Communication), COM (2015) 192 final. 4 Cf. for example Commission, Artificial Intelligence for Europe (Communication), COM (2018) 237 final. 5 Cf. to the EU's “need to catch up” in the area of AI, AI, EU, go THE ECONOMIST, Sept. 22, 2018, at 12. 6 Cf. COM (2018) 237 final. 7 This seminar took place in Brussels on October 18th, 2018 as a "Single Market Forum" on the topic “Legal issues of the Single Market and the challenges of digitization and digitalization”.