EU vows to enforce tech rules despite Trump tariff threats

The European Union has drawn a firm line under its technology regulations, telling the United States Congress that the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act will remain in force regardless of tariff threats from President Donald Trump. In a letter posted on X on Monday, the EU's digital commissioner Henna Virkkunen wrote that the rules protect fundamental rights including freedom of expression, adding: "I will keep enforcing them, for our kids, citizens and businesses."

Virkkunen's letter to Congress

Virkkunen's correspondence, addressed to members of the US Congress, was a direct response to a week of escalating rhetoric from Washington. Last week Trump announced he would impose tariffs on every country that maintains digital taxes, legislation or regulations he claims are designed to harm or discriminate against American technology companies. The president has repeatedly singled out the EU's two flagship tech laws, the DMA, which targets the market power of designated gatekeepers, and the DSA, which obliges very large online platforms to police illegal and harmful content, as vehicles for anti-American bias.

In her letter, Virkkunen reiterated the Commission's long-standing position that both regulations are EU legislation with "no extraterritorial jurisdiction in the US or any other EU country". She pushed back against claims from the US State Department and from tech executives, notably Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, that the rules amount to censorship. The DSA, she argued, upholds freedom of expression not only by protecting consumers against scams and fraud but also by defending democracies against "deliberate manipulation campaigns aimed at undermining free and fair elections".

The legislation at issue

The Digital Markets Act, which entered into force in November 2022 and became fully applicable in May 2023, designates companies with significant market power as gatekeepers and imposes a list of do's and don'ts aimed at keeping digital markets contestable. As of September 2025, six firms, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, have been designated, covering more than 20 core platform services. The Digital Services Act, applicable to very large online platforms and search engines since August 2023, requires systemic risk assessments, independent audits, transparency on recommender systems and rapid takedown of illegal content. Both laws carry fines of up to 10% of global annual turnover for non-compliance, rising to 20% for repeated infringements.

The Commission has consistently maintained that the rules are origin-blind. In a statement preceding Virkkunen's letter, the executive said the regulations formed part of the sovereign right of the EU and its member states to regulate economic activity and rejected the claim that US companies were being targeted. The gatekeeper criteria, €7.5 billion in annual European Economic Area turnover or €75 billion market capitalisation, plus 45 million monthly active users in the EU, are quantitative thresholds that happen to capture the largest American platforms because of their scale, not their nationality.

Macron and Merz close ranks

Political backing for the Commission's stance came swiftly from the two largest EU economies. At a joint press conference in Paris last week, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz presented a united front. "Tax and regulation issues are the preserve of our national parliaments and the European parliament," Macron said. "We won't let anyone else decide for us." He went further, warning that any US move to challenge the regulations would be met with retaliation under the EU's anti-coercion instrument (ACI), which entered into force in December 2023. "Should such measures be taken, it would qualify as coercion and prompt a response from the Europeans," he added.

The ACI, sometimes described as the EU's trade bazooka, allows the bloc to impose countermeasures, including tariffs, restrictions on services and investment, and exclusion from public procurement, against a third country that seeks to pressure the Union or a member state into changing its policies. It has never been triggered. Merz, standing alongside Macron, endorsed the French president's language, signalling that Berlin views the digital rules as a non-negotiable exercise of regulatory sovereignty.

US arguments and the censorship charge

The American critique rests on two pillars. First, the US Trade Representative and the State Department have argued that the DMA's designation criteria and behavioural remedies disproportionately affect US firms, effectively acting as a discriminatory tax. Second, a coalition of industry groups and some Republican lawmakers has labelled the DSA's content moderation requirements a form of state-mandated censorship that violates free speech principles. Zuckerberg, in a podcast appearance earlier this year, described the European approach as "institutionalising censorship" and urged the US government to respond forcefully.

Virkkunen's rebuttal focuses on the DSA's procedural safeguards. The regulation does not define illegal content, that remains the competence of national and EU law, but requires platforms to have transparent notice-and-action systems, to offer users a right to appeal removal decisions, and to submit to independent audits of their systemic risks. The Commission points out that the DSA also protects legal speech by forbidding platforms from removing content arbitrarily and by mandating that terms of service be applied in a diligent, objective and proportionate manner.

The Breton episode

A side current in the dispute concerns Thierry Breton, Virkkunen's predecessor as internal market commissioner. Breton, who left the Commission in September 2024, was invited by a US Congressional committee to testify on the DMA and DSA. Virkkunen objected to the invitation, characterising it as an inappropriate attempt to haul a former EU official before a foreign legislature to account for laws adopted through the ordinary legislative procedure by the European Parliament and the Council. The Commission's legal service has advised that serving commissioners enjoy immunity for acts performed in their official capacity, and that the same principle should extend to former members for actions taken while in office.

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