Running out the digital clock: transatlantic privacy politics and veto points in time

Abstract

ABSTRACT Why does the European Commission continue to sign onto unstable international data flow agreements with the United States? After two agreements were struck down by the European Court of Justice, and clear signals that a new one could meet a similar fate, the European Commission agreed to the Data Privacy Framework. To make sense of this behavior, we connect traditional work on veto points with work on historical institutionalism to highlight an international negotiation strategy – running out the clock. While traditional veto points literature suggests multiple institutions with varying preferences will limit the set of potential policies or their adoption, we highlight how these dynamics change when considering veto points in time. We showcase our argument by building three historical narratives detailing the negotiation of the successive data flow agreements. Our findings have important implications for the future of the transatlantic privacy regime as well as negotiation dynamics.