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Will the EU ever resist Donald Trump and US big tech? The current passivity goes beyond a legal or economic failure: it represents a moral collapse. This inaction calls into question the core principles of the EU's political sovereignty. The central issue is not merely the fate of firms such as Google or Meta, but the fundamental idea that Europe has the right to govern its own digital space according to its own rules.

How We Got Here

To begin, it's important to review the events leading here. During the summer, the European Commission accepted a humiliating agreement with Trump that locked in a ongoing 15% tariff on European goods to the US. The EU received nothing in return. The indignity was all the greater because the commission also agreed to direct well over $1tn to the US through investments and purchases of energy and defense equipment. The deal exposed the fragility of the EU's reliance on the US.

Soon after, the US administration warned of severe new tariffs if Europe enforced its regulations against US tech firms on its own soil.

The Gap Between Rhetoric and Action

For decades Brussels has asserted that its market of 450 million affluent people gives it unanswerable sway in trade negotiations. But in the month and a half since the US warning, the EU has taken minimal action. No counter-action has been implemented. No invocation of the new trade defense tool, the often described “trade bazooka” that the EU once promised would be its ultimate protection against foreign pressure.

By contrast, we have polite statements and a penalty on Google of less than 1% of its annual revenue for established market abuses, already proven in US courts, that enabled it to “abuse” its market leadership in the EU's advertising market.

US Intentions

The US, under Trump's leadership, has made its intentions clear: it does not aim to support EU institutions. It seeks to undermine it. An official publication released on the US State Department website, composed in paranoid, bombastic language similar to Hungarian leadership, accused the EU of “an aggressive campaign against democratic values itself”. It condemned supposed limitations on political groups across the EU, from the AfD in Germany to PiS in Poland.

Available Tools for Response

What is to be done? The EU's anti-coercion instrument functions through assessing the degree of the coercion and applying counter-actions. If most European governments consent, the European Commission could remove US products out of Europe's market, or apply taxes on them. It can remove their intellectual property rights, prevent their financial activities and demand compensation as a requirement of re-entry to Europe's market.

The tool is not merely financial response; it is a statement of political will. It was designed to signal that Europe would always resist external pressure. But now, when it is most crucial, it lies unused. It is not the powerful weapon promised. It is a paperweight.

Political Divisions

In the months preceding the EU-US trade deal, many European governments talked tough in public, but failed to push for the instrument to be activated. Some nations, including Ireland and Italy, publicly pushed for a softer European line.

Compromise is the worst option that Europe needs. It must enforce its regulations, even when they are challenging. In addition to the anti-coercion instrument, the EU should shut down social media “for you”-style algorithms, that recommend material the user has not asked for, on European soil until they are demonstrated to be secure for democracy.

Broader Digital Strategy

Citizens – not the automated systems of foreign oligarchs beholden to foreign interests – should have the freedom to make independent choices about what they view and share online.

Trump is pressuring the EU to water down its digital rulebook. But now especially important, the EU should hold large US tech firms accountable for anti-competitive market rigging, surveillance practices, and preying on our children. EU authorities must hold certain member states accountable for failing to enforce Europe's digital rules on US firms.

Enforcement is not enough, however. The EU must gradually substitute all foreign “major technology” platforms and cloud services over the next decade with homegrown alternatives.

Risks of Delay

The significant risk of this moment is that if Europe does not take immediate action, it will become permanently passive. The more delay occurs, the more profound the erosion of its confidence in itself. The increasing acceptance that opposition is pointless. The greater the tendency that its regulations are unenforceable, its institutions not sovereign, its political system dependent.

When that happens, the route to undemocratic rule becomes inevitable, through automated influence on social media and the normalisation of misinformation. If the EU continues to remain passive, it will be drawn into that same decline. Europe must take immediate steps, not just to resist US pressure, but to create space for itself to exist as a independent and autonomous power.

Global Implications

And in taking action, it must make a statement that the international community can see. In Canada, South Korea and Japan, democracies are observing. They are wondering if the EU, the remaining stronghold of liberal multilateralism, will stand against foreign pressure or yield to it.

They are asking whether representative governments can endure when the leading democratic nation in the world turns its back on them. They also see the example of Lula in Brazil, who faced down US pressure and demonstrated that the way to address a aggressor is to respond firmly.

But if the EU delays, if it continues to release polite statements, to impose token fines, to hope for a better future, it will have already lost.