Trump and Europe is a marriage made in hell.
Trump knows that Europe relies heavily on US advanced munitions and intelligence to continue to defend Ukraine and the European continent against Russian aggression.
So Europe seems to capitulate on everything Trump asks for: on the 5% NATO spending target, on the 15% tariff on EU imports and, in effect, on the collapse of multilateralism.
Now Trump wants the EU to water down hard-won EU laws, which attempt to clean up nasty social media from big tech and create an open market for innovation in the digital economy. He has even threatened sanctions against officials that enforce these EU laws, which would include senior officials not only in DG Connect of the European Commission, but also in national regulators like those in Dublin working for the Irish Data Protection Commission and the new Irish Media Regulator.
In his fantasy world, Trump concludes that the EU is specifically targeting US tech companies and, as he said on Truth Social giving ‘a complete pass to China’s largest tech companies’. In fact, Tiktok, Temu and Shein are all covered by the Digital Services Act (DSA) with their EU headquarters in Dublin. EU law, of course, applies to all companies equally.
The DSA came fully into force across the EU in 2024, as an internal market regulation, and seeks to clean up social media and other online platforms. It addresses illegal content by placing an obligation on the likes of Meta, YouTube and Instagram to take down illegal content when notified of it.
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is about opening up the digital market to competition and removing barriers to entry. As we all know, there is an enormous concentration of power in the digital economy in companies like Google, Amazon and ByteDance.
Guarding Europe’s digital economy
The current EU policy towards Trump’s Presidency is thought as by some in the Berlaymont is ‘strategic realism’ but for many this has all the hallmarks of appeasement. Appeasement is discredited because authoritarians like Trump are given an inch and they take a mile.
Each time the EU has given in to Trump’s bullying, Trump has pocketed the concessions and come back for more.
Defenders of the so-called Trade Agreement in Scotland announced that it provided certainty for European industry and that we could expect a more stable environment in US/EU trade.
Well, it took only a few days but Trump has now come back for more. The EU has already started to dismantle its green legislation and to start now to dismantle the digital legislation would be a historic humiliation.
A reminder of the type of some key features of Trump’s second Presidency so far. He effectively abolished USAID which will lead to an additional 14 million deaths by 2030 according to The Lancet journal. He has attacked the best American universities and most respected media outlets. He continues to stack the justice system with MAGA loyalists leading to the search of the home of his critic John Bolton. He has ordered the National Guard to police Washington DC. He has fired members of the Federal Reserve who show any sign of independence.
His Vice President told the Munich Security conference in February that the EU should not stand in the way of proto-fascist right wing parties, like AFD in Germany, entering government. He rolled out the red carpet, literally, for the war criminal Vladimir Putin despite the outstanding arrest warrant issued by the ICC.
And of course he has facilitated the genocide in Gaza with his blind support of Prime Minister Netanyahu and this extreme right-wing Israeli Government.
So it’s time for the EU to accept the reality that Trump is a bully and that he must be confronted as such. This may come with a short term cost and it will require clear leadership and communication from European leaders, especially from President von der Leyen - the only global leader in the EU institutions. She must engage in real debate with the European Parliament, starting next month in Strasbourg and must engage with Europeans via real media interviews in Brussels and across the national capitals, instead of hiding in the Berlaymont.
Fortunately, the EU already has the tools to finally stand up to Trump such as the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) was passed into law in 2022. It gives the EU the power to stand up to countries that try to interfere with EU or Member State law-making. The ACI came about after the Chinese Government tried to intimidate Lithuania following its recognition of Taiwan.
Described at the time as the ‘big bazooka’, the ACI has never been used and even in the lead up to Scotland, never looked like it was going to be used. No doubt the Commission was hamstrung by some Member States who did not want a trade-war, but the lack of a credible deterrence to Trump was one of the failings in the preparation of that agreement. It takes several months at least to fire that weapon, and a QMV of Member States need to agree, but if now is not the time to roll it out then when is?
In recent years EU trade policy has evolved to be more nimble, more geopolitical to defend Europe against aggressive Chinese trade policies. These tools are available and we should now be prepared to deploy them to confront the great orange menace in Washington.
The only way to deal with a bully, is to stand up to him.
