Would Brussels ever stand up to US President Donald Trump and big tech? Its lack of action is not just a legal or economic failure: It is a moral one. It throws into question the very foundation of Europe’s democratic identity. What is at stake is not merely the fate of Google or Meta, but the principle that Europe has the right to govern its own digital space according to its own laws. If the EU cannot enforce its own laws, then it is a vassal to Washington and to Silicon Valley, with Trump as its overlord.
First, let us recount how we got here. In late July the European Commission accepted a humiliating deal with Trump that locked in a permanent 15 percent tariff on EU exports to the US. Europe received nothing in return. The indignity was all the greater, because the commission also agreed to give well over US$1 trillion to the US by way of investments, and purchases of energy and military materiel. The deal exposed the fragility of Europe’s dependence on the US. Less than a month later, Trump threatened crushing new tariffs if Europe enforced its laws against US tech firms on its own soil.
For decades, Brussels has claimed that its market of 450 million rich people gives it unanswerable sway in trade negotiations. However, in the six weeks since Trump’s threat, Europe has done little. Not a single retaliatory measure. No invocation of the new anti-coercion instrument, the so-called “trade bazooka” that Brussels once promised would be its ultimate shield against foreign pressure. Instead, there have been polite statements and a fine on Google of less than 1 percent of its annual revenue for longstanding anticompetitive behavior, already proven in US courts, that allowed it to “abuse” its dominant position in Europe’s advertising market.
Illustration: Yusha
The US, under Trump’s leadership, has made its intentions clear: It no longer seeks to strengthen European democracy. It seeks to undermine it. A recent essay published on the US Department of State’s Substack, written in the same paranoid, bombastic language as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s speeches, accused Europe of “an aggressive campaign against Western civilization itself.” It condemned supposed restrictions on authoritarian parties across the EU, from the Alternative for Germany to Law and Justice in Poland.
What is to be done? Europe’s anti-coercion instrument works by calculating the degree of the coercion and imposing counter-actions. Provided most European governments agree, the European Commission could kick US goods and services out of Europe’s market, or apply tariffs to them. It can strip their intellectual property rights, block their investments and require reparations as a condition of readmittance to Europe’s market.
The instrument is not merely economic retaliation; it is a declaration of political will. It was designed to signal that Europe would never tolerate foreign coercion, but now, when it is needed most, it lies unused. It is not a bazooka. It is a paperweight. In the months leading to the EU-US trade deal, many European governments talked tough in public, but failed to push for the instrument to be activated. Others, including Ireland and Italy, publicly pushed for a softer European line.
A softer line is the last thing that Europe needs. It must enforce its laws, even when they are inconvenient. Along with the anti-coercion instrument, Europe should shut down social media “for you”-style algorithms, that recommend content the user has not asked for, on European soil until they are proven safe for democracy. Citizens — not the algorithms of foreign oligarchs beholden to foreign interests — should have the freedom to decide for themselves what they see and share online.
Trump is putting Europe under pressure to water down its digital rulebook. However, now more than ever, Europe should hold large US tech firms accountable for anti-competitive market rigging, snooping on Europeans, and preying on children. Brussels must hold Ireland accountable for failing to enforce Europe’s digital rules on US firms. However, enforcement is not enough. Europe must progressively replace all non-EU “big tech” platforms and cloud services over the next decade with homegrown alternatives.
The real danger of this moment is that if Europe does not act now, it would never act again. The longer it waits, the deeper the erosion of its confidence in itself. The more it would believe resistance is futile. The more it would accept that its laws are not binding, its institutions not sovereign, its democracy not self-determined. When that happens, the path to authoritarianism becomes inevitable, through algorithmic manipulation on social media and the normalization of lies. If Europe continues to cower, it would be drawn into that same abyss. Europe must act now, not only to push back against Trump, but to create space for itself to exist as a free and sovereign entity.
In doing so, it must plant a flag that the rest of the world can see. In Canada, South Korea and Japan, democracies are watching. They are wondering if the EU, the last bastion of liberal multilateralism, would resist foreign pressure or surrender to it. They are asking whether democratic institutions can survive when the most powerful democracy in the world turns its back on them. They also see the example of Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who faced down Trump and demonstrated that the way to deal with a bully is to hit hard.
However, if Europe hesitates, if it continues to issue polite statements, to impose token fines, to hope for a better future, it would have already lost.
Johnny Ryan is director of Enforce, a unit of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties.
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