2025/10/01 by Anselm Küsters, Cecilia Emma Sottilotta · 1 voice
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Corporate Taxation and Avoidance #Local Government Finance and Decentralization #Media Influence and Politics
paper · doi:10.1002/epa2.70023
openalex publication_date 2025/10/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
ABSTRACT This article examines the trade‐offs embedded in the European Union's digital policymaking, focusing on the tensions between fundamental rights, security, and economic competitiveness. Using a trilemma framework, the article first conceptualizes how efforts to protect fundamental rights or enhance security may inadvertently constrain innovation. To validate the framework, a computational analysis of EU digital policy documents from 1977 to 2019 is conducted to extract thousands of goal‐oriented sentences and references to trade‐offs using pattern matching and classification with a Large Language Model. The results suggest a clear shift from legislation centered on fundamental rights in earlier decades to complex, multi‐objective frameworks. Through in‐depth qualitative case studies on the GDPR, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act, the article argues that making these trade‐offs more explicit is essential to reduce regulatory uncertainty and enable effective policy learning, ultimately fostering a more democratic and resilient digital ecosystem in the European Union.