Addressing the blurring public/private divide in the EU’s digital single market

Abstract

The EU’s Digital Single Market can be distinguished from the «offline», physical internal market in at least two ways, i.e. firstly through the importance of data and information, and the strong interrelationship between the digital market and citizens’ fundamental rights and, secondly, through the strength and power of private actors. Private actors appear to constitute not only a source of significant restrictions of trade and competition, but also of non-trade or non-market concerns, including fundamental rights. In this con- tribution the question will be addressed as to how these non-market and fun- damental rights concerns of actions by private actors have been and could be addressed by EU internal market law and more in particular by EU free movement law.