EU lawmakers reject US pressure to weaken digital rules ahead of trade vote

Senior European Parliament members from across the political spectrum have told the United States to abandon its campaign to weaken the EU's core digital rulebooks, declaring the legislation a settled legal reality rather than a bargaining chip in trade talks. The blunt message comes as the Parliament prepares to vote Thursday on a transatlantic trade agreement that the US ambassador to the EU, Andrew Puzder, has explicitly linked to revisiting the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act.

A familiar script meets a unified refusal

"There is a certain level of tiredness in Brussels when it comes to responding to these talking points from Washington," said Andreas Schwab, the German centre-right MEP who led Parliament negotiations on the Digital Markets Act. Schwab's frustration reflects a broader weariness among EU lawmakers who have watched successive US administrations characterise European digital regulation as an attack on American companies. "Whether it is Andrew Puzder today or others before him, the script remains the same: they characterise European law as an 'attack' while ignoring that these rules were debated democratically over several years and made for the benefit of consumers and companies, including American companies," he said.

The Digital Services Act (Regulation 2022/2065) and the Digital Markets Act (Regulation 2022/1925) entered into force in late 2022 and 2023 respectively after years of negotiation between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission. Both regulations apply to companies meeting specific size thresholds regardless of nationality. The Commission has designated six gatekeepers under the DMA, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, five of which are US-headquartered, a fact that has fuelled the perception in Washington that the rules are discriminatory by design.

The trade deal as leverage

Puzder's intervention on Monday was calculated. In an interview with POLITICO, he said he hoped the Parliament's vote on the 2025 EU-US transatlantic trade agreement would "set the scene for talks on easing digital rules." The ambassador called on MEPs to back the deal, arguing it would unlock deeper cooperation on energy, technology and artificial intelligence even as he pledged to seek a revision of the bloc's digital legislation. The agreement, formally known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, was concluded last year after negotiations that deliberately excluded digital regulation from its scope, a point EU negotiators insisted on at the time.

Brando Benifei, the Italian socialist who chairs the Parliament's delegation for relations with the United States, was direct about the consequences of linking the two issues. "If US requests become a form of pressure over other issues like the trade deal or energy, they will backfire," he said. Benifei pointed to a domestic political context that makes European lawmakers less susceptible to external pressure than in previous years: "EU constituents are fed up of threats, especially now that they are suffering from increased energy prices linked to the war in Middle East."

Energy crisis sharpens political calculus

The reference to Middle East energy prices is not incidental. Oil prices have spiked to their highest levels in recent years following the US and Israeli military campaign against Iran, leaving European consumers and businesses facing renewed inflationary pressure. The crisis has sharpened the political calculus for MEPs facing re-election campaigns in which cost-of-living issues dominate. Any perception that the Parliament traded away digital protections, popular with voters concerned about platform power, disinformation and market concentration, in exchange for energy relief or trade concessions would be politically toxic.

This dynamic gives the Parliament's refusal structural weight. The DMA and DSA were not imposed by technocrats; they emerged from a legislative process that included extensive public consultation, committee hearings, plenary debates and inter-institutional negotiation. Both regulations passed with broad cross-party majorities. The DMA was adopted by the Parliament with 588 votes in favour, 11 against and 31 abstentions; the DSA passed with 539 in favour, 54 against and 30 abstentions. That democratic pedigree is the shield lawmakers now hold up.

Divergent views on engagement

Not every MEP adopts the same tone. Ana Vasconcelos, a Portuguese Renew Europe lawmaker speaking at POLITICO's Competitive Europe summit in Brussels on Tuesday, struck a more conciliatory note: "Let's talk about it." She suggested the EU's regulatory framework might actually attract American talent who see "a better fit for them" in a system that balances innovation with accountability. Vasconcelos also noted that the United States "has not been scoring very well on protection and free speech, especially under the Trump administration," implicitly rejecting the moral high ground Washington often claims in these disputes.

Alexandra Geese, the German Green MEP who has worked extensively on platform regulation, was less diplomatic. "The US administration's 'obsession' with the EU's tech rules 'should make us suspicious,'" she said in a text message. "The EU should stand firm by its own rules and start enforcing them in a robust way." Her emphasis on enforcement points to the next phase of the conflict: the Commission's implementation of both acts is accelerating, with formal investigations opened against multiple gatekeepers under the DMA and very large online platforms under the DSA.

Enforcement pressure mounts

The European Commission has moved from rulemaking to enforcement with visible speed. Under the DMA, the Commission opened non-compliance investigations against Alphabet, Apple and Meta in March 2025, with preliminary findings suggesting all three fail to meet obligations on self-preferencing, data portability and interoperability. Under the DSA, the Commission has issued formal requests for information to more than a dozen very large online platforms and very large online search engines, and opened formal proceedings against X (formerly Twitter) over suspected failures in content moderation transparency and risk assessment.

Ella Jakubowska, head of policy at European Digital Rights (EDRi), argues that the intensity of US lobbying is itself evidence of regulatory effectiveness. "If US tech giants are putting pressure on the Trump administration to lobby against laws like the Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, then it shows that these laws are working," she said. "They are feeling the pain of the fines of the enforcement actions, which is evidence actually for why we should be doubling down on these rules and the benefits that they bring us in Europe." The DMA allows fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for non-compliance, rising to 20% for repeated infringements. The DSA permits fines up to 6% of global turnover. For companies with revenues in the hundreds of billions, the financial exposure is material.

A transatlantic relationship in transition

The confrontation over digital rules sits inside a broader transatlantic relationship that has become more transactional and less deferential on both sides. The EU has pursued its own trade agenda, concluding agreements with Mercosur, Mexico and Kenya while advancing the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that affects US exporters. The United States, meanwhile, has deployed the Inflation Reduction Act's green subsidies in ways European industry views as discriminatory, and has shown limited appetite for the kind of regulatory cooperation the EU favours in areas from data flows to artificial intelligence governance.

The Trade and Technology Council (TTC), established in 2021 as the primary forum for transatlantic regulatory alignment, has produced modest results: joint roadmaps on AI evaluation, cooperation on semiconductor supply chains, and a shared understanding on export controls for sensitive technologies. But digital platform regulation has remained a persistent fault line. The US has consistently opposed the DMA's ex-ante designation model and the DSA's content moderation obligations, preferring sectoral, voluntary approaches. The EU has treated both as non-negotiable expressions of digital sovereignty.