The influence of global internet governance institutions on the EU

Since the mid-1990s, the EU has sought to engage in the formation and development of the most important multilateral Internet governance institutions, and, in doing so, has portrayed itself as a leading and influential player in the evolving global Internet governance process. The EU has, albeit with varying degrees of success, projected a normative model for Internet governance reflective of its own domestic preferences. A topic as yet very much under-addressed in the literature, however, is the extent to which the EU has absorbed and diffused internally norms and practices from emerging global Internet governance institutions. This paper makes a contribution to establishing how far the EU’s engagement with global Internet institutions has contributed to the evolution of its own ‘internal’ governance of the Internet. The conditions under which this has occurred, the key actors involved and the associated policy outcomes are core topics which this paper addresses. Focusing on two characteristically different bodies, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) and the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), the chapter shows how through its presence in these fora, the EU has engaged with three core practices of Internet governance articulated globally: private interest regulation, multi-stakeholderism, and self-regulation