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Can Brussels finally stand up to the US administration and American tech giants? Present inaction goes beyond a legal or economic failure: it represents a ethical failure. This inaction throws into question the very foundation of the EU's political sovereignty. The central issue is not only the future of firms such as Google or Meta, but the principle that Europe has the authority to regulate its own digital space according to its own rules.

Background Context

First, let us recount how we got here. In late July, the European Commission agreed to a one-sided agreement with Trump that locked in a ongoing 15% tax on EU exports to the US. Europe gained no concessions in return. The indignity was all the greater because the EU also agreed to direct more than $1tn to the US through investments and purchases of resources and military materiel. The deal exposed the vulnerability of the EU's dependence on the US.

Less than a month later, the US administration threatened severe new tariffs if the EU implemented its laws against American companies on its own soil.

The Gap Between Rhetoric and Action

For decades EU officials 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 Trump's threat, the EU has taken minimal action. Not a single counter-action has been taken. No invocation of the new trade defense tool, the so-called “trade bazooka” that Brussels once vowed would be its primary shield against external coercion.

Instead, we have diplomatic language and a penalty on Google of less than 1% of its annual revenue for longstanding anticompetitive behaviour, previously established in American legal proceedings, that enabled it to “abuse” its dominant position in Europe's advertising market.

US Intentions

The US, under the current administration, has signaled its goals: it does not aim to strengthen EU institutions. It seeks to weaken it. An official publication released on the US State Department website, written in paranoid, inflammatory language similar to Hungarian leadership, charged Europe of “systematic efforts against democratic values itself”. It condemned alleged limitations on authoritarian parties across the EU, from the AfD in Germany to Polish organizations.

Available Tools for Response

What is to be done? Europe's trade defense mechanism functions through assessing the extent of the coercion and applying retaliatory measures. If most European governments agree, the EU executive could kick US goods and services out of the EU market, or apply tariffs on them. It can strip their patents and copyrights, block their investments and demand reparations as a requirement of readmittance to Europe's market.

The instrument is not merely economic retaliation; it is a declaration of determination. It was designed to demonstrate that Europe would always resist foreign coercion. But now, when it is most crucial, it lies unused. It is not the powerful weapon promised. It is a symbolic object.

Internal Disagreements

In the period preceding the transatlantic agreement, many European governments talked tough in official statements, but did not advocate the mechanism to be activated. Some nations, including Ireland and Italy, openly advocated a softer European line.

Compromise is the worst option that the EU needs. It must implement its laws, even when they are challenging. Along with the trade tool, the EU should disable social media “recommended”-style algorithms, that recommend material the user has not asked for, on European soil until they are proven safe for democratic societies.

Comprehensive Approach

Citizens – not the automated systems of foreign oligarchs serving foreign interests – should have the autonomy to make independent choices about what they see and distribute online.

The US administration is putting Europe under pressure to weaken its online regulations. But now especially important, Europe should make large US tech firms accountable for distorting competition, surveillance practices, and targeting minors. EU authorities must ensure certain member states accountable for not implementing Europe's online regulations on US firms.

Enforcement is insufficient, however. Europe must gradually substitute all foreign “major technology” platforms and computing infrastructure over the next decade with European solutions.

Risks of Delay

The significant risk of this moment is that if the EU does not act now, it will never act again. The more delay occurs, the deeper the erosion of its confidence in itself. The increasing acceptance that opposition is pointless. The more it will accept that its laws are unenforceable, its governmental bodies lacking autonomy, its democracy dependent.

When that occurs, the path to authoritarianism becomes unavoidable, through automated influence on social media and the acceptance of lies. If the EU continues to cower, it will be drawn into that same abyss. Europe must take immediate steps, not only to resist US pressure, but to create space for itself to exist as a free and sovereign entity.

International Perspective

And in doing so, it must make a statement that the international community can see. In North America, South Korea and East Asia, democracies are observing. They are wondering if the EU, the remaining stronghold of international cooperation, will stand against external influence or yield to it.

They are asking whether democratic institutions can endure when the most powerful democracy in the world abandons them. They also see the model of Brazilian leadership, who confronted US pressure and showed that the way to address a bully is to respond firmly.

But if the EU delays, if it continues to release polite statements, to impose token fines, to hope for a improved situation, it will have effectively surrendered.