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RGMUPRV0347.5 ECTSQ1EnglishMaster

EU Digital Innovation and Regulation

FaculteitFaculty of Law, Economics and Governance
NiveauMaster
Studiejaar2026-2027

Beschrijving

Course goals

After this course
  • The students have knowledge and understanding of the rationales, general doctrines and principles of regulation and modes of regulation, particularly in the context of technology regulation;
  • The students have knowledge and understanding of European law and policy, particularly in the field of the digital acquis and technology regulation, particularly in the European constitutional context, as well as the relationship between European law and national law of the Member States;
  • The students can formulate a substantiated position relating to selected instances of the use of digital technologies and practices, as well as emerging harms in the field of European digital regulation covered by the instruments pertaining to the digital acquis;
  • The students can formulate a substantiated position about current developments, regulatory strategies and solutions for legal issues that are topical in practice in the area technology innovation regulation, taking into account their socio-technical context, relevant law, doctrine and academic literature;
  • The students can independently acquire in-depth knowledge and understanding of a European regulatory problem in the field of the digital acquis in a short period of time, and synthesize this knowledge concisely and coherently;
  • The students can communicate in English knowledge, ideas, solutions and conclusions as well as the arguments, motives and considerations underlying them in an understandable, structured, correct and convincing manner, in both writing and orally, and can reflect on their own performance.

Content

Content (English)

In this course, we introduce students to theoretical perspectives on the regulation of technology and innovation, and we discuss how the European Union (EU) has been approaching the regulation of technology, and particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI) in recent years. The course aims to offer foundational knowledge that can help ground some of the most important legal reforms in information technology in European governance.
The course focuses on two main pillars.
First, it looks at the foundations of technology regulation. The objective of regulation is to ensure that markets function properly by eliminating market failures, and by protecting societies from risks arising from new technologies. Regulatory interventions in the markets, however, may be detrimental to technological innovation, and any intervention requires careful consideration. In this part of the course, students will learn the basic notions and concepts of regulation, such as market failure, risk, and uncertainty. The course will also equip students with an in-depth understanding of the main principles of regulation by means of studying regulatory theory scholarship and contextualizing this knowledge by applying it to the analysis of the most recent regulatory interventions in the EU. The first part of the course consists of four weeks of lectures and seminars which address the following topics and questions:
  • An introduction to regulation
  • Modes of regulation
  • Regulating socio-technical change: an AI case study
  • Regulatory enforcement
Second, it explores the emerging EU Digital Acquis, reflected by the growing number of European legislative instruments and complementing policies in the field of technology regulation. In the past years, the European Union has been developing and implementing a wide array of technology regulation reforms, including some that have gotten global traction, such as the Digital Services Act package (Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act), and the Artificial Intelligence Act. These instruments have been rocketed into EU law against a background of existing sectoral legislation with more or less direct links to the digital field. The effectiveness of the Digital Acquis will thus very much depend on its interactions with earlier digital regulation, such as the General Data Protection Regulation, as well as with more general regulation rooted in non-digital sectors, such as consumer protection instruments (e.g. the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive). The course uses fundamental knowledge in EU law to explore and analyze these links, and equip students with an advanced understanding of how traditional concepts and principles around European law-making apply to the digital sector. The second part of the course consists of four weeks of lectures and seminars in which the following themes and questions will be tackled:
  • European harmonization and digital technologies
  • The European digital acquis
  • Coherence and fragmentation in the digital acquis: a dark patterns case study
  • The future of the digital acquis
 
Place of the course within the curriculum:
  • Compulsory course in the master Law and Technology in Europe;
  • Compulsory course in the specialisation Law and Technology of the master European Law.

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