🔗 Share this article

Will European leadership ever stand up to the US administration and American tech giants? Present inaction goes beyond a legal or financial shortcoming: it constitutes a moral collapse. This inaction calls into question the very foundation of Europe's political sovereignty. What is at stake is not only the future of firms such as Google or Meta, but the fundamental idea that Europe has the right to govern its own digital space according to its own rules.

The Path to This Point

First, it's important to review the events leading here. During the summer, the EU executive accepted a one-sided deal with the US that established a ongoing 15% tariff on EU exports to the US. Europe received nothing in return. The embarrassment was all the greater because the commission also agreed to provide more than $1tn to the US through investments and acquisitions of resources and military materiel. This arrangement revealed the vulnerability of the EU's reliance on the US.

Soon after, Trump threatened crushing new tariffs if Europe implemented its laws against US tech firms on its own soil.

Europe's Claim vs. Reality

Over many years Brussels has claimed that its market of 450 million affluent people gives it unanswerable leverage in trade negotiations. But in the month and a half since Trump's threat, the EU has taken minimal action. No retaliatory measure has been taken. No invocation of the recently created trade defense tool, the so-called “trade bazooka” that Brussels once vowed would be its ultimate shield against foreign pressure.

By contrast, we have polite statements and a fine on Google of under 1% of its annual revenue for longstanding market abuses, already proven in US courts, that allowed it to “exploit” its market leadership in Europe's advertising market.

US Intentions

The US, under Trump's leadership, has made its intentions clear: it does not aim to strengthen European democracy. It seeks to undermine it. An official publication published on the US Department of State's website, written in alarmist, inflammatory language similar to Viktor Orbán's speeches, accused the EU of “systematic efforts against democratic values itself”. It condemned supposed restrictions on authoritarian parties across the EU, from German political movements to Polish organizations.

Available Tools for Response

How should Europe respond? The EU's anti-coercion instrument functions through assessing the degree of the coercion and imposing counter-actions. If EU member states agree, the European Commission could remove US products out of the EU market, or apply tariffs on them. It can remove their intellectual property rights, block their investments and require reparations as a condition of re-entry to EU economic space.

The tool is not only financial response; it is a declaration of determination. It was designed to signal that Europe would never tolerate external pressure. But now, when it is needed most, it remains inactive. It is not the powerful weapon promised. It is a symbolic object.

Political Divisions

In the months preceding the EU-US trade deal, several EU states talked tough in public, but failed to push for the instrument to be activated. Others, such as Ireland and Italy, publicly pushed for more conciliatory approach.

A softer line is the worst option that the EU needs. It must enforce its laws, even when they are inconvenient. In addition to the anti-coercion instrument, the EU should shut down social media “recommended”-style algorithms, that recommend material the user has not asked for, on European soil until they are demonstrated to be secure for democratic societies.

Comprehensive Approach

Citizens – not the algorithms of foreign oligarchs serving external agendas – should have the autonomy to decide for themselves about what they see and share online.

The US administration is putting Europe under pressure to weaken its digital rulebook. But now especially important, the EU should make large US tech firms accountable for distorting competition, surveillance practices, and preying on our children. Brussels must hold Ireland responsible for failing to enforce EU online regulations on US firms.

Regulatory action is insufficient, however. The EU must gradually substitute all non-EU “major technology” services and computing infrastructure over the coming years with European solutions.

Risks of Delay

The significant risk of this moment is that if the EU does not act now, it will become permanently passive. The longer it waits, the deeper the decline of its self-belief in itself. The increasing acceptance that opposition is pointless. The more it will accept that its laws are unenforceable, its governmental bodies not sovereign, its democracy dependent.

When that occurs, the path to authoritarianism becomes unavoidable, through algorithmic manipulation on social media and the normalisation of lies. If Europe continues to remain passive, it will be drawn into that same abyss. The EU must take immediate steps, not just to push back against Trump, but to establish conditions for itself to function as a free and autonomous power.

International Perspective

And in doing so, it must plant a flag that the rest of the world can see. In North America, Asia and East Asia, democracies are observing. They are wondering if the EU, the remaining stronghold of international cooperation, will stand against foreign pressure or yield to it.

They are inquiring whether representative governments can endure when the leading democratic nation in the world abandons them. They also see the model of Lula in Brazil, who faced down US pressure and showed that the way to address a aggressor is to hit hard.

But if the EU delays, if it continues to issue diplomatic communications, to impose symbolic penalties, to hope for a better future, it will have effectively surrendered.