EU and Asia in the Digitalized World

Annual events of the Nordic-Asian Forum for International Economic Law bring together leading scholars and practitioners to discuss key developments in global economic regulation and governance. The 2021 edition focuses on opportunities and challenges created by digitalization processes.

About the conference:
The pace of development of digital technologies in recent years has been exponential at a global scale. Concepts such as job automation, digital services and goods, tech start-ups and other forms of technological entrepreneurship have taken cross-border trade and capital movements by the storm. While digitalization changes the ways in which international trade and commerce is conducted, it also redesigns corporate structuring, creates new markets and transforms obligations, responsibilities, dispute settlement mechanisms and the way such disputes arise. The COVID-19 pandemic, and the accompanying turn to online services and technologies, has further augmented many of these processes. It is important for lawyers and professionals dealing with international economic law conundrums to understand the context and extent of digitalization in economic law.

Global challenges related to digitalization in the context of trade and investment ventures, as well as environmental sustainability, have accelerated in recent years along with the shifts between major economic powers and their contribution to the development of these technologies. The dynamic growth of industrialization in Asia, intra- and cross-regional trade exchanges, and the flow of investments often located in developing countries, has led to a number of issues such as cybersecurity concerns, blockchain patents, and high activity of Chinese tech giants carving an ever-growing share of the global market. Relatively recent business phenomena, such as the rise of Huawei and Alibaba, attest to this trend. The impact of digitalization-related policies on trade and investment partners of the leading Asian economies is momentous. It is also particularly pressing in the context of the changing dynamics of the EU-Asia investment relations, including the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) and its consequences for the digital and technology sectors.

The conference will study these phenomena and their consequences for the EU and Nordic countries, as well as for their Asian partners, in the legal, political, cultural and economic context.

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