Regulatory Power Beyond the Brussels Effect—How Data Localisation Requirements Restructure Global Cloud-Infrastructures

• Author: Laura Meyer
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cep4.70041
• Published date: 02 May 2026
• Section: Research Article

Contemporary European Politics

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Regulatory Power Beyond the Brussels Effect—How

Data Localisation Requirements Restructure Global

Cloud‐Infrastructures

Laura Meyer

European New School of Digital Studies (ENS) at the European‐University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Frankfurt, Germany

Correspondence: Laura Meyer (lmeyer@europa-uni.de)

Received: 8 October 2025 | Revised: 19 March 2026 | Accepted: 24 April 2026

Keywords: cloud infrastructures | digital sovereignty | regulatory power | weaponized interdependence

ABSTRACT

The regulatory power of the European Union (EU) is commonly conceptualised as its capacity to externalise its regulations into

other jurisdictions, a form of influence widely referred to as the Brussels effect. Yet, within the digital economy, scholars

observe a departure from global regulatory convergence toward patterns of competition, conflict, and divergence. These

developments raise the question of how changing global conditions affect the nature and scope of the EU's regulatory power in

the digital economy. This paper argues that regulatory divergence foregrounds another, less explored aspect of the EU's

regulatory power: its structural dimension. It contends that the global influence of European regulations not only operates

through regulatory diffusion, but that regulations can also function as instruments of structural power that reshape global

(infra)structural networks underpinning the digital economy. These (infra)structural changes, in turn, affect global power

dynamics conditioned by those very structures. The argument builds on a two‐dimensional understanding of structural power

that bridges the power operating through structures and the power to shape those very structures. The paper illustrates the

structural dimension of the regulatory power of the EU through an exploratory case study in the cloud sector, where European

data localisation requirements trigger a market mechanism, labelled here as the ‘pull‐in effect’. This mechanism restructures

the topography of global infrastructure networks by provoking the establishment of ‘sovereign’ cloud capacities in the EU. By

influencing the spatial architecture of these cloud infrastructures, European regulations affect global power dynamics in the

data economy by mitigating strategic vulnerabilities arising from asymmetrical interdependence. The paper aims to contribute

to scholarly discussions concerned with the consequences of regulatory convergence in the digital economy, changing (infra‐)

structural dynamics, and the geoeconomic turn of the EU.

1 | Introduction

The European Union's (EU) regulatory power is commonly

understood as its capacity to externalise its regulations beyond

its own jurisdiction, thereby diffusing European norms and

regulatory standards globally (Eckert 2021; Hadjiyianni 2021;

Kennis and Liu 2024). This form of power and the mechanism

behind it are famously captured by Anu Bradford's concept of

the Brussels Effect (2012, 2019). However, in the digital

economy, recent scholarship observes tendencies toward con-

flicting regulatory approaches, regulatory competition, and

divergence of regulatory regimes (Bradford 2023; Corning 2024;

Ylönen 2025). These developments raise a critical question:

How do changing global conditions affect the nature and scope

of the EU's regulatory power in the digital economy?

In response to this question, this paper argues that the tendency

toward growing regulatory competition and diverging regula-

tory regimes brings to the fore another, less examined aspect of

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the original work is properly cited.

© 2026 The Author(s). Contemporary European Politics published by University Association of Contemporary European Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

1 of 13 Contemporary European Politics, 2026; 4:e70041

https://doi.org/10.1002/cep4.70041