Matthias Bauer

Covid-19 and its broader implications have highlighted the importance of Europe’s digital transformation to ensure Europeans’ social and economic well-being. It provides important new learnings about Europe’s quest for “technology sovereignty”. While the debate about technology sovereignty is timely, the precise meaning of sovereignty or autonomy in the realm of technologies remains ambiguous. It should be noted that the political discussions about...

In the context of the proposal to establish an EU investment screening framework and the ongoing negotiations of the EU-China investment agreement, ECIPE in cooperation with the Mechanical Engineering Industry Association (VDMA) organised a discussion with stakeholders on the threats and opportunities of Chinese investments in European technology and European investments in China in September 2018. This bulletin is based on stakeholder opinions expressed during...

Online platforms create “more perfect” markets. Online platforms are a market-driven cure to the imperfections of the EU’s incomplete Single Market. Platforms provide well-functioning technical infrastructures that allow users to easily deal with country-specific legislation in the EU, e.g. VAT and invoicing requirements, consumer protection laws, sector-specific licenses and the particularities of national contract law. Modern online platforms have...

The European Commission has recently proposed to upend decades of international tax cooperation and introduce a new three percent tax on corporate turnover from digital advertising and online intermediation services. The proposal is not just remarkable for the actual design of the tax; it is equally notable that the digital services tax is proposed without any supporting evidence that it is in EU Member States’ economic and fiscal interest to tax digital business...