Why Europe’s new tech laws have the world on edge

The promise and the reality of EU tech laws

“The DMA will change the digital landscape profoundly,” and “we will also not shy away from using our enforcement powers.” “Users, Member States, and platforms can now use the tools under the DSA to shape a safer and more transparent online world. This is a big milestone that reflects our fundamental EU values and principles.” The EU is “fully mobilised” and “effective enforcement is key to protect our citizens from illegal content and to uphold their rights.”

Such were the enthusiastic words of then-Commissioners Margrethe Vestager and Thierry Breton when the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA) entered into force in 2022. Since then, however, it seems it is more the geopolitical landscape rather than the digital one that changed profoundly.

Big Tech firms never loved Europe’s tech regulations and have lobbied to water them down from the very beginning — with some limited success. Yet, since Donald Trump’s second term started, the political and legal attacks against Europe’s tech laws has been exceedingly vile and relentless. To be clear: Those attacks do not come from the US alone. Authoritarians and the far-right everywhere, including in Europe, dislike the increased transparency and user rights the DSA provides and worry that the DMA might reduce the dominance of Big Tech firms, disrupting the seamless collusion of a small billionaire class with autocratic political power. They hate those tech laws because these laws might reduce their ability to undermine democracy.

For the record, and for those who are still wondering: no, the DSA is not a censorship law. It was passed to protect people’s freedom of expression and prevent poor content moderation by online platforms (in case you are interested in the legal details, see this defence of the DSA endorsed by over 30 academics, as well as this freely accessible book). There is no misunderstanding: those who claim the DSA seeks censorship deliberately deceive the public for political or financial gain.

And no, the DMA is not anti-American and is not responsible for the slower rollout of new Apple products in Europe. It is meant to enable innovation from tens of thousands of smaller firms by curbing the market power of dominant Big Tech corporations. Of course, Big Tech hates the DMA because complying with it costs them money. A lot.

Enforcement so far: successes and challenges

Together with other civil society organisations, we have successfully used the DSA to force online platforms LinkedIn and X to change behaviour. We have co-initiated additional non-compliance investigations into Meta, with several more underway. Under the DMA, we have provided extensive written and verbal evidence and arguments about non-compliance by Apple and Google to the European Commission. These regulations have power. They can work.

Are Europe’s digital laws perfect? No, of course not. The DSA’s rules around mandatory risk mitigation for very large online platforms and search engines are vague, and their enforcement is almost non-existent so far. Plus, one of its ambiguous provisions about protecting minors online is already being used by the European Commission to impose mandatory age verification for some online platforms despite there being no such obligation in the DSA itself.

The effectiveness of parts of the DSA and the entire DMA hinge on the political will and ability of the European Commission to properly enforce them. This creates a single point of failure that Big Tech billionaires, the US government, or even the likes of Viktor Orbán are keen to exploit for political or financial gain—to the detriment of the rule of law and of the digital rights of 450 million people in Europe.

Our democracy and our rights are at stake

It does not have to be that way. If we want to better protect people online and reduce the unacceptable power that Big Tech firms have over everybody’s digital lives—in other words: if we want our tech laws to succeed, the European Commission’s enforcement units must be better shielded from political pressure. They must be better staffed and better funded and must have a free hand in ensuring that all companies covered by those laws and active in the EU comply with every single provision to its full extent. Most importantly, they must be able to take decisions and pursue cases against non-compliance without political interference from Commissioners or even Commission President Von der Leyen.

As we have outlined in an op-ed over a year ago: Big Tech companies seek to delay, depress, and destroy Europe’s tech regulations by any means at their disposal. They block, mislead, sue, and threaten Europe while actively enabling authoritarian politics to take over the US and Europe. And while the European Commission’s initial enforcement activities looked promising, they seem to have slowed down to a trickle. Instead of the bold show of regulatory force that was the hallmark of ex-Commissioner Vestager, we now see contradictory communications, behind-the-curtains “trade” deals that may or may not have impacted DSA and DMA enforcement, as well as a deafening silence whenever civil society or journalists ask about the final non-compliance decisions that should have been taken a long time ago against X, Meta, Apple, Tiktok, and all those other Big Tech firms that quite openly do not seem to respect the law.

The DSA and the DMA are not perfect, but all things considered, they are good laws. Even though it wasn’t supposed to be their primary purpose, EU tech legislation is now one of the first lines of defence against authoritarianism. If Europe does not want to lose democracy, or its credibility as a global regulatory leader in tech, the European Commission needs to enforce them now and fast. Otherwise, DSA and DMA are not worth the paper they’ve been printed on.