With President Trump inbound, EU reassesses tech probes into Apple, Google and Meta
The European Union (EU) is reassessing its investigations of tech groups including Apple, Meta and Google, just as American companies urge President Donald Trump to intervene against what they characterize as overzealous EU enforcement and days ahead of the president’s second inauguration.
Javier Espinoza and Henry Foy for Financial Times:
The review, which could lead to the European Commission scaling back or changing the remit of the probes, will cover all cases launched since March last year under the EU’s digital markets regulations, according to two officials briefed on the move.
It comes as the Brussels body begins a new five-year term amid mounting pressure over its handling of the landmark cases and as Trump prepares to return to the White House next week.
“It’s going to be a whole new ballgame with these tech oligarchs so close to Trump and using that to pressurise us,” said a senior EU diplomat briefed on the review. “So much is up in the air right now.”
Two other EU officials said Brussels regulators were now waiting for political direction to take final decisions on the Google, Apple and Meta cases.
The review comes as EU lawmakers call for the commission to hold its nerve against US pressure, while Silicon Valley chiefs hail Trump’s return as the start of an era of lighter tech regulation.
Denmark’s Margrethe Vestager and France’s Thierry Breton, both of whom took a tough line against US tech companies, stepped down from the commission in November.
MacDailyNews Take: The EU is smart to reassess, proving that there’s a first time for everything.
MacDailyNews Note: Last October, Apple CEO Tim Cook called President Trump to discuss the $17 billion in fines with which Apple has been hit by the EU. Trump said that once he was re-elected, he would’t let the EU “take advantage” of American companies like Apple.
“He [Cook] said something that was interesting,” Trump said at the time. “He said they’re using [those fines and the threat of more] to run their enterprise, meaning Europe is their enterprise. “I said, ‘Tim, I’ve got to get elected first, but I’m not going to let them take advantage of our companies — that won’t, you know, be happening.’”
The European Union arose because the Europeans couldn’t compete on their own with the rest of the world, so they each lined up to surrender their national sovereignty, unique cultures, and dignity for an undemocratic, opaque, wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic quasi-governmental blob – and, even with the EU’s thumbs all over the scale, they still can’t compete. — MacDailyNews, March 4, 2024
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