Europe is advancing its crackdown on Big Tech by imposing fines on Alphabet’s Google and Elon Musk’s X while initiating new investigations, asserting its sovereign right to enforce its laws in defiance of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Three months after imposing an unexpectedly high fine of 2.95 billion euros ($3.44 billion) on Google, the European Commission on Friday levied a 120 million euro penalty on Elon Musk’s X for violating European Union online content rules.
The U.S. government has resisted, linking reductions in U.S. steel import tariffs to weaker EU digital rules and instructing its diplomats to launch a lobbying blitz against the laws.
The focus is on the EU’s Digital Markets Act, aimed at curbing the power of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Booking.com, and ByteDance, and the Digital Services Act, which requires large online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera has firmly rejected U.S. criticism.
“It is our duty to remind others that we deserve respect. I don’t interfere with how they regulate health standards in the U.S. market. But I am responsible for defending the well-functioning digital markets in Europe, and it has nothing to do with any type of joint conversation,” she stated at one event.
At another event, she dismissed those who view competition law as a tool for controlling markets or advancing narrow economic interests.
“It is an essential pillar of open, fair, and sustainable markets. It should never be a bargaining chip in trade negotiations or a tool for protectionism,” Ribera said.
The impact of the U.S. threats, initially shocking, may be diminishing, said Daniel Mandrescu, a lawyer at Geradin Partners and an associate law professor at Leiden University.
“The EU Commission’s announcement of an official investigation into Meta indicates that the threat of political pressure is rapidly losing its strength – the rule of law is simply not a negotiable matter,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Supporters of European values currently have the upper hand, but the real test still lies ahead, said Rupprecht Podszun, a professor at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and a director at the Institute for Competition Law.
“I was amazed to see this new vigor in EU enforcement. Now, this also comes as an obligation: It becomes harder now to back down. The commitments in the Google Ad-Tech case will provide the litmus test as well as the fate of the Meta AI probe,” he said.
Last month, Google offered to make it easier for publishers and advertisers to use its online advertising technology, defying EU antitrust regulators’ call for it to sell part of the business to address conflicts of interest.
An EU decision on the proposal will likely come early next year. EU regulators on Thursday started an investigation into Meta and could order it to pause its rollout of AI features in its WhatsApp messenger that would block rivals.
