📧LISTENING TO TIMOTHY SNYDER: THE UNITED STATES AS WELL AS EUROPE DEFEND DEMOCRACY, BUT EUROPE IS MORE USING COMPLIANCE LAW FOR IT

►Timothy Snyder, an American scholar specialized in 20th century European history, particularly World War II, expressed his concern about the relationship between the United States and technology, when technology helps people to take power in democratic political systems (💻Snyder, T. The stage of Our Democracy, February 2021). He calls in particular Law to stem this new and disastrous alliance.

During this online conference, Timothy Snyder, worried about the future of Democracy in the United States, stressed that one of the weaknesses of this country lies in its lack of legal instruments to stem fake news that are spreading on platforms, observing that while the United States use the force of Antitrust Law, Europe has on the contrary equipped itself with legal instruments to directly counter what could bring down the American democratic institutions, in particular the mechanism of "disinformation" or "hate speeches", immune to Competition Law.

So let's follow Timothy Snyder's look at the European continent.

The various European countries do this by adopting, one after the other, specific legislation to counter and prevent disinformation and hate speeches. After France and Germany, which were the first countries to do so, it is Italy which took the plunge.

Yes, this is happening in all Member States to directly fight against disinformation (Italy will follow France and Germany (➡️📝British Association of Comparative Law, Italy's Fight against fake news, 2021)).

Europe, which remains liberal but wants to be sovereign, is in the process of building, in balance with the pillar of Competition, the autonomous and articulated pillar of Compliance to protect people against these mechanisms of disinformation and the spread of hate speeches which can sweep away democracies.

Europe is well placed to do so since it can relies on its humanist tradition to build a Compliance Law which targets above all human beings and not free competition and competitive dynamism (➡️📝Frison-Roche, M.-A., What can Compliance Law build relying on the European humanist tradition, 2019).

Europe is thus able to build "Internet governance" through Compliance Law (➡️📓Frison-Roche, M.-A., The contribution of Compliance Law to Internet Governance, 2020 ).

Europe is doing it through texts under discussion. The European Commission is writing three texts. One to ensure competitive dynamism: the 📜Digital Markets Act. Another to govern digital contents: the 📜Digital Services Act. And finally another to enable European companies to take joint initiatives supervised by the European Authorities: the 📜Data Governance Act.

The last two texts fall under Compliance Law, conceived as follows: they lead to a sovereign Europe (see for example ➡️📝Tardieu, H. Data Sovereignty and Compliance, in ➡️📕Compliance Tools, 2021).

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