The EU Must Make (Digital) Peace, Not War, With the United States

In a time of growing influence of China and its large internet companies, you may think that we urgently need the EU’s proposed tech transatlantic partnership with the United States. You would be right. And yet, the EU is fighting the wrong war, ramping up its fight against the US’ most innovative tech companies. If the EU has any hope of a stronger transatlantic alliance now that, in the words of President Joe Biden, “America is back”, it will need to deescalate the digital war.

As Aurelien Portuese writes in New Europe, the proposed changes, European tech companies (such as Booking.com) escape scrutiny. The DMA will only apply to five American tech companies – namely Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft. This is a drastic narrowing of the twenty companies initially targeted when the European Commission released the DMA last December.

Ideally, a transatlantic tech partnership would spur collaborations between governments and companies to rebalance the rising Chinese tech industry. With optimal innovation policies, Chinese state-sponsored and state-affiliated tech companies may be held in check. The US alone and EU alone may not effectively squash the multiple concerns a Communist dictatorship muting into a tech champion raises for tech democracies. We need a transatlantic tech partnership. Today, the EU proposal is not credible, even more so with the DMA.