\u201cHe may never be Europe\u2019s president, but he can be its godfather,\u201d said one EU diplomat who, like others in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. \u201cThe appropriate analogy is more criminal. We\u2019re dealing with a mafia boss exerting extortionate influence over the businesses he purports to protect.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBrussels effect\u201d<\/p>\n
It was not long ago that the EU could describe itself credibly as a trade behemoth and a \u201cregulatory superpower\u201d able to command respect thanks to its vast consumer market and legal reach. EU leaders boasted of a \u201cBrussels effect\u201d that bent the behavior of corporations or foreign governments to European legal standards, even if they weren\u2019t members of the bloc.<\/p>\n
Anthony Gardner, a former U.S. ambassador to the EU, recalls that when Washington was negotiating a trade deal with the EU known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the 2010s, the U.S. considered Europe to be an equal peer.<\/p>\n
\u201cSince the founding of the EEC [European Economic Community], America\u2019s position was that we want a strong Europe,\u201d said Gardner. \u201cAnd we had lots of disagreements with the EU, particularly on trade. But the way to deal with those is not through bullying.\u201d<\/p>\n
One sign of the EU\u2019s confidence was its willingness to take on the U.S.\u2019s biggest companies, as it did in 2001 when the European Commission blocked a planned $42 billion acquisition of Honeywell by General Electric. That was the beginning of more than a decade of assertive competition policy, with the bloc\u2019s heavyweight officials like former antitrust czar Margrethe Vestager grandstanding in front of the world\u2019s press and threatening to break up Google on antitrust grounds, or forcing Apple to pay back an eye-watering \u20ac13 billion over its tax arrangements in Ireland. <\/p>\n
Compare that to last week, when the Commission was expected to fine Google for its search advertising practices. The decision was at first delayed at the request of EU Trade Commissioner Maro\u0161 \u0160ef\u010dovi\u010d, then quietly publicized via a press release and an explanatory video on Friday afternoon that did not feature the commissioner in charge, Teresa Ribera. (Neither move prevented Trump from announcing in a Truth Social post that his \u201cAdministration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand.\u201d)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHe may never be Europe\u2019s president, but he can be its godfather,\u201d said one EU diplomat who, like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":411073,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5174],"tags":[141375,7155,11783,17468,29,2437,6659,473,3677,7157,21469,32,33,34,2000,299,5187,7058,1699,2915,1945,2440,2199,43,33109,2992,2441,1216,2597,32949,2444,32776,712,811,1199,21387,2824,479,1201,657,49,1220,1781,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-411072","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-eu","8":"tag-anthony-gardner","9":"tag-antitrust","10":"tag-antonio-costa","11":"tag-capital-markets-union","12":"tag-career","13":"tag-companies","14":"tag-crisis","15":"tag-defense","16":"tag-digital","17":"tag-digital-markets-act","18":"tag-digital-services-act","19":"tag-donald-trump","20":"tag-elections","21":"tag-emmanuel-macron","22":"tag-eu","23":"tag-europe","24":"tag-european","25":"tag-european-defense","26":"tag-european-union","27":"tag-exclusive","28":"tag-friedrich-merz","29":"tag-giorgia-meloni","30":"tag-italy","31":"tag-macron","32":"tag-mario-draghi","33":"tag-mark-rutte","34":"tag-markets","35":"tag-maros-sefcovic","36":"tag-military","37":"tag-nato-summit","38":"tag-regulatory","39":"tag-sabine-weyand","40":"tag-scotland","41":"tag-security","42":"tag-services","43":"tag-state-of-the-union","44":"tag-tanks","45":"tag-tariffs","46":"tag-trade","47":"tag-ukraine","48":"tag-united-states","49":"tag-ursula-von-der-leyen","50":"tag-viktor-orban","51":"tag-war"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411072","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=411072"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411072\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/411073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=411072"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=411072"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=411072"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}