EU readies tougher tech enforcement in 2026 as Trump warns of retaliation

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According to Brussels officials and policymakers, the European Commission is switching focus to enforcing an expansive digital rule book after years of negotiating landmark legislation to take on the world’s biggest technology groups.

That effort will face political challenges over the coming year. The Trump administration has demanded changes to the bloc’s tech rules and threatened to impose tariffs in retaliation for EU actions against Silicon Valley groups.

The EU focus on enforcement comes as Washington’s effort to split up Big Tech groups is faltering after setbacks in several big monopoly cases that cast doubt on the government’s strategy to rein in some of the world’s biggest companies.

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“There have been moments that we have needed to, where I have needed to, stand up and say: sorry, but we’re not going to undo our regulation just because you don’t like [it],” the EU’s competition chief Teresa Ribera [said].

The approach requires sticking with its existing laws, including the Digital Markets Act (DMA), aimed at opening powerful “online gatekeepers” to rivals, and the Digital Services Act (DSA), which forces internet companies to better police illegal content.

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The bloc has begun probing new areas of potential enforcement. In December, Brussels launched an investigation into whether Meta was preventing rival AI providers from accessing WhatsApp, and Google’s use of online content for AI models. Regulators also launched investigations to ensure enough competition in the cloud-computing sector.

“You go ahead in that measured, professional way, and you’re just a little bit more quiet perhaps than you otherwise would be because there’s really no pay-off to making a lot of announcements,” said Fiona Scott Morton, an antitrust scholar at Yale University.

But she added that when it came to enforcing its digital rules, “there is pay-off to moving forward and achieving outcomes that benefit the European people and business users”.

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But Damien Geradin, an antitrust lawyer who has represented companies in probes against Google and others, said: “The enforcement of EU digital regulations has been made more challenging by the aggressive stance taken by the US administration.”

Geopolitical considerations have emboldened Big Tech to fight back with a fierce lobbying effort in Europe and the US. Google said the EU’s investigation into its AI models “risks stifling innovation in a market that is more competitive than ever”.

Apple has demanded that Brussels scrap its DMA altogether, while Meta has said the commission tries “to handicap successful American business while allowing Chinese and European companies to operate under different standards”.

Caving to internal or external pressure on enforcement would be a “disaster” for the European economy, said Mario Marinello, a fellow at the Brussels-based think-tank Bruegel. “If you want competitiveness, you need strong competition enforcement.”

Even the current enforcement of digital rules was “too little, too late,” said Alexandra Geese, a European lawmaker who sits with the Greens in the European Parliament.

“There is an attack on our democracy going on, led by the tech oligarchs on social media, and we’re not really defending ourselves.”