Suggested citation: R. Torino, Lo statuto digitale europeo della persona, in lceonline, 2/2026, I/Saggi e contributi, p. 17 ss.
Key words: European digital status of the person, digital ecosystem, anthropocentric principle, principle of continuity, private infrastructural power, Court of Justice
Abstract: In less than a decade, EU law has built a dense regulatory apparatus for the digital ecosystem ‒ GDPR, DSA, DMA, AI Act ‒ so far read mainly as a set of distinct sectoral regimes. This essay advances a different reading: it reconstructs that corpus, together with the case law of the Court of Justice, as a single legal figure, the European digital status of the person. “Status” here does not denote a pre-existing subjective status (citizenship, consumer standing), but a coordinated set of legal positions that the legal order attaches to a subject by reason of the concrete situation in which it is placed: structural exposure to data processing, automated decisions, intermediation architectures and algorithmic systems. Once recomposed, this position displays three specific features: it derives from the situation rather than from a prior title; it is organised into coordinated positions around a unitary axiological foundation (Art. 2 TEU, the anthropocentric principle, the principle of continuity, the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU); and it is protective in a twofold direction, addressed not only to public power but, above all, to the private infrastructural power of platforms. The final part sets out the reasons for consolidating the status as a systematically orienting category, one able to guide interpretation, fill gaps, gauge the regressive pressures on the anthropocentric design, and project the European model outward, while acknowledging its limits in terms of effectiveness.
