La sovranità digitale

The paper examines the notion of “digital sovereignty,” an evocative expression marked by a fundamental semantic ambiguity: should it be understood as sovereignty of the digital or sovereignty over the digital? Considering the transformation brought about by the commercial use of the Internet, the analysis focuses on the crisis of the territorial paradigm of law in the face of a legal space encompassing telematic relationships, detached from physical territory, within which lex informatica and a new lex mercatoria have emerged. Having outlined this framework, the paper identifies the reasons for its crisis, namely the factors that have unsettled public authority and prompted it to reclaim the normative space. It further examines the choices made by the European Union and concludes by reflecting on the role of law and politics within a context of “plurality of sovereignties”.