Eco-Digital Products and Services: Towards New EU Sustainability Rights?

Within this context and given the focus of the recently adopted Declaration on Digital Rights and Principles on digital sustainability, the present chapter examines whether and to what extent this document is shaping or recognising new sustainability rights in the digital environment. Section II analyses the content of Chapter VI of the Declaration, focusing on its legislative history and subsequent amendments. We will argue that Chapter VI has not recognized a new right to a healthy environment in the digital society, but rather enshrines a principle of sustainable digital products and services. The novelty of this principle is then examined in Section III, which looks in more detail at EU and Member States law as well as at existing digital bills of rights. The chapter will posit that the uniqueness of Chapter VI lies in making explicit the principle of sustainable products and services through an operation of normative retrofitting that reconstructs a guiding principle of already existing EU and Member State regulatory and policy strategies. Finally, Section IV contextualises Chapter VI within the EU digital and environmental policy framework, questioning the feasibility of its ambitions starting from the assumption that even a virtuous digitalisation may negatively affect the environment. We will refer to theories of digital sobriety and degrowth, ultimately arguing that the reconciliation between the twin transitions in the Declaration is unavoidably only partial.