Europe forges ahead with Big Tech crackdown with X fine, defying Trump

BRUSSELS: Europe is forging ahead with its crackdown on Big Tech, levying fines on Alphabet’s Google and Elon Musk’s X and opening new investigations, asserting its sovereign right to enforce its laws in defiance of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Three months after hitting Google with an unexpectedly high 2.95 billion euro ($3.44 billion) fine, the European Commission on Friday imposed a 120 million euro penalty on Elon Musk’s X for breaching European Union online content rules.

The U.S. government has pushed back, linking reductions in U.S. steel import tariffs to weaker EU digital rules and ordering its diplomats to launch a lobbying blitz against the laws.

At issue are the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which seeks to rein in the power of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft, as well as Booking.com, ByteDance, and the Digital Services Act, which forces big online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content.

EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera has flatly rejected U.S. criticism.

“It is our duty to remind others that we deserve respect. I don’t enter into how they regulate the health standards in the U.S. market. But I am in charge of defending the well-functioning digital markets in Europe and it is not related at all with any type of joint conversation,” she told one event.

At another, she rebuffed those who see 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.

HARDER TO BACK DOWN

The effect of the U.S. threats, while a shock initially, may be wearing off, 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 have the upper hand for now, 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 vigour 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.