Towards an integrated European digital ecosystem. Digital Omnibus, Data Act, AI Act and the protection of human beings in data governance and Artificial Intelligence

Abstract

The recent evolution of the European Union’s regulatory framework on data, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and digital identity reveals a process of profound institutional transformation, one that goes far beyond the technical dimension of innovation to take on the characteristics of a true constitutional repositioning of the European legal order. Digitalization, far from being merely an instrumental phenomenon, becomes the ground on which the Union reaffirms its political and legal identity, defining a governance model capable of combining technological progress, the integrity of institutions, and the substantial protection of the human person. The result is an innovation law that is not peripheral to the fundamental architecture of the legal order, but is situated at its very center, as it is built on the quality of data, the transparency of algorithms, and public responsibility as an indispensable condition for democratic legitimacy. The set of recent interventions by the European Union constitutes a broad-reaching project, in which technological innovation, regulatory efficiency, and the protection of the individual are not placed in a dialectical or, much less, a conflicting relationship, but are integrated into a unified conception of digital development as an intrinsically value-driven process. Europe thus commits to building a model where technology does not operate as a factor of restriction of freedoms, but as a tool through which to more fully realize dignity, equality, and democratic participation. In this sense, digitalization is configured as the place where the capacity of the European legal order to govern its future is measured, while preserving the centrality of the individual and the solidity of institutions. This is the distinctive feature of the path taken: a modernity that advances not against the law, but through the law, and that finds in the rule of law, proportionality, and responsibility the means to ensure that technological progress remains, at all times, irreducibly Human.