Today’s EU-US Summit in Brussels, at which President Obama will join his European counterparts, Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council, and José Manuel Barroso, President of the European Commission, provides an important opportunity to reinforce EU-US economic ties. A strong transatlantic partnership will send a message to global markets that the greatest prospects for economic growth and development lie in keeping borders open to data flows and preventing mandates on where servers and other computing infrastructure are located.
The commercial relationship between Europe and the US is the most significant in the world. Yet events this past year have strained this bond, in particular revelations about US government access to data. As a result, some European policymakers have argued the EU should retreat from its strong economic ties with America, calling for suspension of the Safe Harbor mechanism that facilitates cross-border data flows, requesting servers to be located geographically within Europe, even pushing for European IT independence. (more…)