‘They want regime change in Europe’: How tech firms and US President are piling pressure on the EU
https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/they-want-regime-change-in-europe-how-tech-firms-and-trump-are-piling-pressure-on-the-eu/
by Crossstoney
‘They want regime change in Europe’: How tech firms and US President are piling pressure on the EU
https://www.businesspost.ie/politics/they-want-regime-change-in-europe-how-tech-firms-and-trump-are-piling-pressure-on-the-eu/
by Crossstoney
39 comments
“If the EU had hoped that the signing of a trade deal with the US earlier this month would usher in a period of calm, it was swiftly disappointed.
Less than a week later, Donald Trump was issuing new tariff threats over the bloc’s tech rulebook, and pressuring foreign countries to end the use of digital taxes.
The fact that American firms hate EU tech rules and taxes is not new. Neither is the fact that they are lobbying in Washington, Dublin, Brussels and elsewhere to make their case.
But what is new is the way in which Donald Trump’s administration is backing them. Just days after the Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg visited Trump in the White House, where they discussed tech taxes, the president took to his Truth Social account to press foreign countries to change their laws.
Alexandra Geese, a German Green MEP and one of the European Parliament’s lead negotiators on the EU’s flagship digital services act (DSA), said that tech CEOs have more sway than ever over the US administration.
“We’re not talking classical lobbying,” she told the Business Post. “It’s a completely different order of magnitude. They want regime change in Europe, and the DSA is their obstacle.”
The DSA, which allows Brussels to step in over the heads of Irish and other national regulators to counter hate speech, disinformation or election interference, is seen by Zuckerberg, X owner Elon Musk and US vice-president JD Vance as censorship.
“Even before the US elections, JD Vance was saying that if the EU keeps up the DSA, the US was going to pull our troops out of Nato,” Geese said. “I remember at the time I thought ‘this is completely crazy, because it’s just so over the top’. And now I’m rethinking this. And I think, well, they actually might.”
At an event in Austria last week, the commission’s director general for trade Sabine Weyand, who led the recent tariff talks, said the bloc was effectively bounced into accepting a trade deal with Washington after the US threatened to “abandon the security partnership with the EU” if Brussels refused to play ball.
Weyand said the EU will have to accept the fact that the world is “more power-based than rules-based at the moment”.
Ursula Von der Leyen, the EU Commission president, insisted that there was “no linkage” between security and trade in her talks with the US, and that ending the tariff uncertainty was top of her mind during the negotiations.
“For me, it was important that we had predictability and stability for our businesses and our economies,” she told reporters in Helsinki on Friday.
“You see in those regions where no deal is achieved, but high tariffs are there, how advantageous it is to have the predictability, to have the stability and to have the clarity between us.”
While the Finnish prime minister Petteri Orpo said that “we have to be happy” with what Von der Leyen achieved, several former and current commissioners are urging her to stand up to Trump on tech, which was left out of the transatlantic trade deal despite pressure from the US to include it.
Ex-industry commissioner Thierry Breton, who resigned before his term ended last year, wrote in the Guardian of the need to “push back now” or face “humiliation and instability”.
Von der Leyen’s current industry chief, Stéphane Séjourné, said that the trade deal will “have to be reviewed” if Trump follows through on his threats to sanction countries that implement the Brussels rulebook, including through suspending visas of foreign regulators.
“That’s a credible threat,” MEP Geese said. “I mean [secretary of state Marco] Rubio made it in April, and now they’re doubling down. I would be on that list, probably.”
Competition commissioner Teresa Ribera said the bloc should “avoid the temptation of being subordinated to others’ interests”.
The tech industry is unsure of how to handle the stand-off. One industry source said the US threats make things more complicated for companies that are trying to push for the EU to pare back what they insist are complex and overlapping tech rules.
“Trump has narrowed the space for what the commission can do,” the person said on condition of anonymity. “If the commission settles any points … it might actually look weak and everyone will interpret it as it bowing to Trump. But we will continue to fight the good fight.”
Regina Doherty, Fine Gael’s MEP for Dublin, said the EU should not “concede even an inch” to Trump or risk not being taken seriously.
“Eventually small concessions turn into big concessions, and then where is our authority? It becomes totally undermined and the next time [Trump] wants to throw toys out of the pram, what do we do?” she told the Business Post.
“If you want to do business with the EU, then you adhere to the laws. If you don’t like the rules and the engagements that we have in our territory, well then take your business somewhere else.”
Another industry source, who did not want to be named because of what they said was the political sensitivity around the trade deal, said a better way for US tech firms to reduce EU tech rules is to wait for a review of the DSA scheduled for this November.
“There are opportunities to go about these things, but trying to do it right after a trade deal and by making further threats is not it,” the person said. “The EU can’t bow down to that. We’ve told that to the Americans. It’s a bit of an own goal in trying to achieve the things they would like.”
Also on the way in November is a new omnibus law targeting EU tech rules, part of the commission’s so-called simplification agenda. But tech companies are not confident it will mean real deregulation.
In his Guardian piece, Breton spoke of an “ever-widening gulf of misunderstanding” between the EU and US on digital regulation, “a gulf that the major tech platforms – American, in this case – are exploiting to the hilt”. For now at least, there is no sign of that gulf narrowing.” – Business Post
Ask yourself “When is it enough?”
But you know, EU is like 27 democratic countries (or 26 with exception of Hungary).
Perhaps, take care about American problem first, before you imagine that you have something to say to others.
Hostility and bullying towards all but Putin and a few other monsters is what the Trump presidency is all about.
There are no words for how vile this is.
This is why union should start to make money not just with US. I know it’s the easiest. But in fact invest wise in Europe. Make European own War sector. Additionally tax the hell facebook, Amazon and other big US company’s.
To make Donald happy help democrats.
People don’t seem to realize that the plan is to bring what they did in the US to the EU too, and their chance of success is absolutely 100% if the saboteurs working for years against the EU stability from within aren’t stopped right now, although I think it’s already too late. It will require more time because of different countries, different election times, political leaning etc. but one by one all EU countries will fall under the far right cancer if all the remaining sane leaders can do is gather around a table and talk forever. Once it happens we can say goodbye to democracy forever; this time there will be no allies to come and save us.
So this anonymous guy just told the US administration how to make the EU bow down but with better optics? Traitor.
Then dont use usa tech services…local datacenters opensource and local cloud providers….locking your entire digital infrastructure into a banana republic is dumb.
There is options…use them…fund them…you lazy corrupt suits.
Literally what’s your problem? EU dictates how EU users go about the internet. This has nothing to do with the US.
This deal was dumb, of course they will come back for more. That’s the mafia playbook they will never stop. We have to pay the cost now whatever it is and move on, or it will cost more later.
Also please delete your meta and X accounts!
What have we become. Supposedly powerful but pushed around as a vassal state.
>If you want to do business with the EU, then you adhere to the laws. If you don’t like the rules and the engagements that we have in our territory, well then take your business somewhere else.
That’s what tariffs were for. To attempt to bring their business back to the US. They’re trying to move their business away, and the rest of the world is trying to stop them.
And it’s not like the US makes Europe use its big tech. Look at China, they developed their own alternatives for everything the US has. Maybe it’s way past time for Europe to start investing in alternatives.
“Quick, introduce chat control, that should help”
Trying to spread the US sickness globally, to sanctify its expanding authoritarian control.
r/buyfromEU
Ban American social media in the EU!
Boycot the US. For everything you possibly can, find a European replacement.
r/BoycottUnitedStates
As long as EU keeps saying “Yes, Sir”, to America, they will keep barking orders. The American tech bro money machine will keep on buying off politicians in Europe unless EU makes a tough stand on them.
To be fair, the feeling’s mutual
>“Even before the US elections, JD Vance was saying that if the EU keeps up the DSA, the US was going to pull our troops out of Nato,” Geese said. “I remember at the time I thought ‘this is completely crazy, because it’s just so over the top’. And now I’m rethinking this. And I think, well, they actually mighThings are clear: the US is blackmailing our security. And the EU has given in so as not to lose this American security.
>At an event in Austria last week, the commission’s director general for trade Sabine Weyand, who led the recent tariff talks, said the bloc was effectively bounced into accepting a trade deal with Washington after the US threatened to “abandon the security partnership with the EU” if Brussels refused to play ball.
But now they are demanding the repeal of our digital laws, and they will also demand Greenland to protect it from Russia.
But if Russia attacks the Baltic states, there is no guarantee they will intervene.
It has already happened in NATO’s history that they did not intervene (Cyprus).
We can no longer rely on them for our security and no longer buy weapons from them.
Their troops must leave Europe. ‘US go home’, de Gaulle said 60 years ago.
Never say “never can it happen again”. Same playbook as 90 years ago.
Could tech firms and US president fuck off?
This is capitalism manifest
If you haven’t already, please read “Careless People” by Sarah Wynn-Williams, the Facebook whistleblower no longer allowed to promote her book because of Meta’s emergency arbitrator block.
Any initiative funded by the EU will be bought by a US competitor in no time. So you would need to prevent that too.
I am not opposed to regime change in th EU myself, my only concern is that the new regime might be even worse than current one.
The EU makes me unhappy. Why follows the USA like tail ? As we all know those tech companies are tools of American intelligence services…how can you let them do as they wished ? I would like to see the EU start their own businesses like China did. It’s still not too late.
Kick USA from EU.
power to the masses! We need tk take back our streets, our forrests our fields and most importantly our freedom od thought.
Oppose all billionaires and their push for power. We are the majority! Money doesn’t equal votes!
It’s been their goal all along. And somehow, it’s now clearer than ever before.
Europe’s dependence on US tech isn’t some new thing that crept up with Silicon Valley giants in the last 20+ years. It goes way, way back to WWII, and even earlier in some sectors.
From the very early days, the IT sector has been heavily US dominated because of their scale of capital access, with relatively little European counterweight, except in telecoms, and even there, US capital was omnipresent there too. Early US outfits like IBM and ITT had huge footholds in Europe. ITT in particular did most of its business here, with R&D centres and subsidiaries scattered across the continent since the early 1900s long before any sense of a European integrated economy, and the financing, control and profits flowed back to the US. For many decades, half of Europe’s telecom networks were running on ITT kit. That whole empire eventually got swallowed by France’s Alcatel in the 80s, but for a long time much of Europe’s infrastructure was depending on them.
When it came to computing, Europe had a lot of promising starts and fundamental technology breakthroughs, but basically never scaled. There were strong starts here and there, but the companies rarely took off in a big way – you see that in the UK, Germany, France, Italy etc. Instead, Europe became not just a consumer of US output, but an integrated cog in the US R&D system and markets, with Silicon Valley driving it since the 60s and the big university focused clusters in the east coast long before that. The US poured vast sums into tech R&D through military linked programmes like DARPA, while private capital piled in on that. Europe, meanwhile, produced smaller often more specialist firms and only a handful of players that became globally relevant, mostly telecoms equipment makers like Ericsson and Nokia, or niche industrial IT tech – like control systems, automation etc – often very engineering linked.
Europe never treated US dominance as a threat. It leaned into the partnership, seeing the US as an ally and major trade partner. China, in total contrast, saw the US as an existential competitor and a strategic threat and built its own tech base to avoid dependence.
Where Europe has performed much more strongly is in areas like pharma and biopharma, specialist technologies and engineering, aviation etc – and then big scale manufacturing like automakers etc, but those are also areas Trump is aggressively targeting with tariffs and seeing as somehow “stealing” from the US, which is utter nonsense. He sees trade as threatening after a century of their economy being built on it.
Trump has pulled the rug, and those deep EU-U.S. and British , Swiss, etc and lots of other deep connections to the US suddenly are highly exposed, dangerous weaknesses. The same or worse is applying to Canada even more dramatically and it will hit places like Australia, NZ, Japan and everyone in the U.S. sphere of influence.
The idea that Europe can just snap its fingers and replace a century of ties is, unfortunately, wishful thinking, especially in IT.
It could eventually happen as a very long term strategy, but it won’t happen overnight, or even over a decade or more. That isn’t going to change the need to support and scale up European innovation, and keep ownership of it here in Europe, but the reality is it’ll take decades to shift. In the meantime, we’re exposed and probably heading for a very, very rough ride.
The only consolation is that the US cannot escape unscathed either by pulling the rug. Its economy is also tightly integrated with ours and with others around the globe, and when trade flows taper off, it’ll face serious financial turmoil itself. If European trade were to dramatically collapse you would be looking at a gargantuan market collapse and economic crisis. That collapse in trade would be coupled with all the other aggressive anti trade policies being pushed, so the implications are profound and vast. They’re also undermining their own R&D capabilities – attacking universities, severely cutting federal programmes, damaging agencies, blocking student visas, chasing away talent etc.
Sorry to be gloomy about this but I think Trump and MAGA are completely insane, and economically illiterate, and the tech bros think they can just bully, disrupt and keep extracting profit using them as a bludgeon to get their way.
My prediction is an unprecedented and chaotic market crisis is on the horizon which could well lead to a disastrous mess and make 2008 or the earlier tech crunch feel like blips.
They can do it as well since European leaders won’t make any effort to stop us from being dependent on US tech since they’re to busy shoving their noses up Trump’s asshole and giving in to everyone of his bullshit tariff threats.
As an european, we have to grown a spine before the Oligarchs ripp it out of us. So, NOW.
Well EU want to tax them if possible.
Oh. Now the UE and European nations should look to South America and Africa and Asia to try to understand the ways and lengths the USA will go to overthrow legimite governments in favour of puppets.
Sure, regime change for EU but not Russia and other despotic regimes.
EU countries are getting what Latin America has been getting for a century, courtesy of the CIA.
At least they aren’t getting the CIA supporting military coups (yet).
Enjoy the sovereignty.
So why does Ireland keep granting these corporate bodies tax advantages? Make em pay their fair share.
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