The politics of the 'Brussels Effect' narrative

The Chapter revisits the Brussels Effect at a time of heightened transatlantic tensions about the legitimacy of EU regulation of US platforms. Its central argument is that the Brussels Effect narrative does not simply provide an objective, politically neutral account of European regulatory activism, but a meta-narrative that pushes a political agenda of the illegitimate extraterritoriality of EU regulation: who is Europe to dictate to the world (but really to the US) how to regulate global (online) trade. In response, the Chapter argues that Europe’s regulatory activism of the information economy must not be understood as an offensive extraterritorial strategy, but as a defensive territorial one. This defensive strategy seeks to counter, in Europe, the hegemony of US platforms and US laissez faire law (e.g. s 230 Communications Decency Act and First Amendment jurisprudence) which has reverberated around the globe, and which also explains why other States have had an interest in following the European regulatory lead. European platform regulation is a pushback against the Washington Effect, that is the US’s de facto and de jure export of its deregulatory laws to the rest of the world. The Washington Effect provides a counter-narrative on the EU-US tensions on the information economy. So although the Brussels Effect has been a successful grand narrative, it perverts the geo-political reality and disguises Washington as the real centre of (de)regulatory power.