The Trump administration says it is barring former European Commissioner Thierry Breton and four other European nationals involved in curbing hate speech from U.S. soil as part of a sanctions package targeting what it describes as digital censorship. The sanctions, announced Tuesday, also revoke the U.S. visas of British citizens Imran Ahmed and Clare Melford, who respectively head the Centre for Countering Digital Hate and the Global Disinformation Index. Ahmed, who currently lives in Washington, faces immediate deportation, the Telegraph reported. Germany’s Anna-Lena von Hodenberg and Josephine Ballon, leaders of Hate Aid, a non-profit that tracks digital disinformation spread by far-right groups, are also subject to the visa bans. The move is the latest in a series of warning shots volleyed by the U.S. at allies over what it views as unfair efforts to regulate American social media and tech giants, including Elon Musk-owned X, which was slapped with a €120 million fine earlier this month for violating the bloc’s content moderation law. In a statement, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described the targets of the newly announced sanctions as “radical activists” who had worked to “coerce American platforms to censor, demonetize, and suppress American viewpoints.” Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy Sarah Rogers named the targets of the package in a thread posted on X in which she underscored the Trump Administration’s rejection of European efforts to crack down on hate speech. Rogers justified Breton’s visa ban by naming the French official, who served within European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s first administration, as the “mastermind” behind the bloc’s landmark Digital Services Act (DSA). That legislation has allowed the EU to level multimillion-euro fines on American tech giants like Apple and Meta for breaking digital antitrust rules, and to go after X for failing to curb disinformation. She also identified Britain’s Ahmed as a “key collaborator with the Biden Administration’s effort to weaponize the government against U.S. citizens,” and said Melford‘s Global Disinformation Index had used taxpayer money to “exhort censorship and blacklisting of American speech and press.” Rogers, who recently met with representatives of the German right-wing populist Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Washington, further named von Hodenberg and Ballon, both of Berlin-based non-profit Hate Aid, for allegedly censoring conservative speech. Breton responded to the sanctions with a post in which he asked if former U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist “witch hunt” was being revived, and pointed out that the DSA had been approved by the majority of lawmakers in the European Parliament and unanimously backed by the bloc’s 27 member countries. “Censorship isn’t where you think it is,” he wrote, questioning U.S. efforts to undermine the EU’s quest to reduce the spread of disinformation. European Commission Vice President for Industrial Strategy Stéphane Séjourné on Wednesday backed Breton in a post in which he said “no sanction will silence the sovereignty of the European peoples.” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot condemned the visa restrictions and defended the DSA, which he said ensures “what is illegal offline is also illegal online.” The Trump administration is openly opposed to European attempts to regulate online platforms. Vice President JD Vance routinely rails against alleged attempts to use digital rules to censor free speech, and earlier this month said the EU should not be “attacking American companies over garbage.” Tech policy professionals say actions like Tuesday’s sanctions package, and the previous issuance of veiled threats at European companies accused of unfairly penalizing U.S. tech giants, may amount to a negotiating tactic on the part of a White House that wants to underscore its discontent with Europe’s regulations — without risking new trade wars that could threaten the U.S. economy.

The Trump administration is lashing out at foreign laws aimed at clamping down on online platforms that have gained outsized influence on people’s attention — while trying to avoid launching new trade wars that could threaten the U.S. economy. Over the past month, U.S. officials have paused talks on a tech pact with the United Kingdom, canceled a trade meeting with South Korean officials and issued veiled threats at European companies over policies they believe unfairly penalize U.S. tech giants. Several tech policy professionals and people close to the White House say the recent actions amount to a “negotiating tactic,” in the words of one former U.S. trade official. As talks continue with London, Brussels and Seoul, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative is pressing partners to roll back digital taxes on large online platforms and rules aimed at boosting online privacy protections — measures U.S. officials argue disproportionately target America’s tech behemoths. “It’s telegraphing that we’ve looked at this deeply, we think there’s a problem, we’re looking at tools to address it and we’re looking at remedies if we don’t come to an agreement,” said Everett Eissenstat, who served as the director of the National Economic Council in Trump’s first term. “It’s not an unprecedented move, but naming companies like that and telegraphing that we have targets, we have tools, is definitely meaningful.” But so far, the administration has shied away from new tariffs or other aggressive actions that could upend tentative trade agreements or upset financial markets. And the new tough talk may not be enough to placate some American tech companies, who are pressing for action. One possible action, floated by U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, would be launching investigations into unfair digital trade practices, which would allow the administration to take action against countries that impose digital regulations on U.S. companies. “I would just say that’s the next level of escalation. I think that’s what people are waiting for and looking for,” said a representative from a major tech company, granted anonymity to speak candidly and discuss industry expectations. “What folks are looking for is like action over the tweets, which, we love the tweets. Everyone loves the tweets.” Trump used similar investigations to justify raising tariffs on hundreds of Chinese imports in his first term. But those investigations take time, and it can be years before any increases would go into effect. Greer has also been careful to hedge threats of new trade probes, stressing they are not meant to spiral into a broader conflict. Speaking on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” last week, he floated launching a trade investigation into the EU’s digital policies, but said the goal would be a “negotiated outcome,” not an automatic path to higher tariffs. “I don’t think we’re in a world where we want to have some renewed trade fight or something with the EU — that’s not what we’re talking about,” Greer said. “We want to finish off our deal and implement it,” he continued, referring to the trade pact the partners struck over the summer. Greer also raised the prospect of a trade probe in private talks with South Korea earlier this fall, saying the U.S. might have to resort to such action if the country continues to pursue legislation the administration views as harmful to U.S. tech firms. But a White House official clarified that the U.S. was not yet considering such a “heavy-handed approach.” Even industry officials aren’t certain how aggressive they want the Trump administration to be, acknowledging that if the U.S. escalated its fight with the EU over their tech regulations, it could spark a digital trade war that would ultimately end up harming all of the companies involved, according to a former USTR official, granted anonymity to speak candidly. President Donald Trump has long criticized the tech regulations — pioneered by the European Union and now proliferating around the globe. But he’s made the issue a much more central part of his second-term trade agenda, with mixed results. While Trump’s threat to cut off trade talks with Canada got Prime Minister Mark Carney to rescind their three percent tax on revenue earned by large online platforms, his administration has struggled to make headway with the EU, UK and South Korea in the broader trade negotiations over tariffs. The tentative trade deal the administration reached with the EU over the summer included a commitment from the bloc to address “unjustified digital trade barriers” and a pledge not to impose network usage fees, but left the scope and direction of future discussions largely undefined. The agreement fleshed out with South Korea this fall appeared to go even further, spelling out commitments that regulations governing online platforms and cross-border data flows won’t disadvantage American companies. But none of those governments have so far caved to U.S. pressure to abandon their digital regulations entirely, and the canceled talks and threatening social media posts are a sign of Trump’s growing frustration. “You won’t be surprised to know that what we think is fair treatment and what they think is fair treatment is quite different and I’ve been quite frankly disappointed over the past few months to see zero moderation by the EU,” Greer said Dec. 10 at an event at the Atlantic Council. Last week, Greer’s office amped up the rhetoric further, threatening to take action against major European companies like Spotify, German automation company Siemens and Mistral AI, the French artificial intelligence firm, if the EU doesn’t back off enforcement of its digital rules. The threat came a week after the EU fined X, the company formerly known as Twitter, $140 million for failing to meet EU transparency rules. Greer’s office also canceled a meeting planned for last Thursday with South Korean officials, as South Korean lawmakers introduced new digital legislation and held an explosive hearing on a data breach at Coupang, an American-headquartered e-commerce company whose largest market is in South Korea. The South Korean Embassy denied any relationship between the Coupang hearing and the cancellation of the recent meeting. “Neither Coupang’s data breach, the subsequent investigation by the Korean government, nor the National Assembly’s hearing played a role in the scheduling of the KORUS Joint Committee,” said an embassy official. The canceled meetings and frozen talks are significant — delaying implementation of bare bones trade agreements and investment pledges inked in recent months. But the Trump administration has shown little interest in blowing up the deals its reached and reapplying the steep tariffs it threatened over the summer, which could trigger significant retaliation and, as concerns about affordability and inflation continue to simmer in the U.S., prove politically dicey. Launching trade investigations at USTR or fining specific foreign companies could be a less inflammatory move. “What is happening is that these issues are starting to come to a head,” said Dirk Auer, a Director of Competition Policy International Center for Law & Economics, who focuses on antitrust issues and recently testified before Congress on digital services laws. “At some point the administration has to put up or shut up. They need to put their money where their mouth is. And I think that’s what’s happening right now.” Gabby Miller contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — The European Commission has opened an antitrust investigation into whether Google breached EU competition rules by using the content of web publishers, as well as video uploaded to YouTube, for artificial intelligence purposes. The investigation will examine whether Google is distorting competition by imposing unfair terms and conditions on publishers and content creators, or by granting itself privileged access to such content, thus placing rival AI models at a disadvantage, the Commission said on Tuesday. In a statement, the EU executive said it was concerned that Google may have used the content of web publishers to provide generative AI-powered services on its search results pages without appropriate compensation to publishers, and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content. Further, it said that the U.S. search giant may have used video and other content uploaded on YouTube to train Google’s generative AI models without compensating creators and without offering them the possibility to refuse such use of their content. The formal antitrust probe follows Google’s rollout of AI-driven search results, which resulted in a drop in traffic to online news sites. Google was fined nearly €3 billion in September for abusing its dominance in online advertising. It has proposed technical remedies over that penalty, but resisted a call by EU competition chief Teresa Ribera to break itself up.

A message from Brussels to Google: Would you break yourself up, please? The search giant faces an early November deadline to say how it intends to comply with a European Commission decision in September, which found that it had illegally maintained its grip on the infrastructure that powers online advertising. With a €2.95 billion fine in the rearview mirror, the Commission and Google find themselves in an unprecedented standoff as Brussels contemplates the once unthinkable: a structural sell-off of part of a U.S. company, preferably voluntary, but potentially forced if necessary. The situation is “very unusual,” said Anne Witt, a professor in competition law at EDHEC Business School in Lille, France. “Structural remedies are almost unprecedented at the EU level,” Witt added. “It’s really the sledgehammer.” In its September decision, the Commission took the “unusual and unprecedented step,” per Witt, to ask Google to design its own remedy — while signaling, if cautiously, that anything short of a sale of parts of its advertising technology business would fall foul of the EU antitrust enforcer. “It appears that the only way for Google to end its conflict of interest effectively is with a structural remedy, such as selling some part of its Adtech business,” Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s competition chief, said at the time. As the clock counts down to the deadline for Google to tell the Commission what it intends to do, the possibility of a Brussels-ordered breakup of an American tech champion is unlikely to go unnoticed in Washington, even as the Donald Trump administration pursues its own case against the search giant. (Google accounts for 90 percent of the revenues of Alphabet, the $3.3 trillion technology holding company headquartered in Mountain View, California.) Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera, the Commission’s competition chief. | Thierry Monasse/Getty Images Google has said that it will appeal the Commission’s decision, which in its view requires changes that would hurt thousands of European businesses. “There’s nothing anticompetitive in providing services for ad buyers and sellers, and there are more alternatives to our services than ever before,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, its vice president and global head of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post in September. PARALLEL PROBES The proposal for a voluntary break up of Google marks the culmination of a decade of EU antitrust enforcement in digital markets in which “behavioral” fixes achieved little, and a unique alignment in both timing and substance between the U.S. and the EU of their parallel probes into the firm’s ad tech empire. “It would have been unthinkable 10 years ago that there would be a case in the U.S.  and a sister case in Europe that had a breakup as a potential outcome,” said Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Tech Institute, which is advocating for a break-up. The Commission formally launched the investigation into Google’s ad tech stack in 2021, following a drumbeat of complaints from news organizations that had seen Google take control of the high-frequency exchanges where publishers and advertisers agree on the price and placement of online ads.  Google’s control of the exchanges, as well as infrastructure used by both sides of the market, was like allowing Goldman Sachs or Citibank to own the New York Stock Exchange, declared the U.S. Department of Justice in its lawsuit in 2023. It also created a situation in which cash-strapped news organizations on both sides of the Atlantic saw Google eating an increasing share of revenues from online advertising — and ultimately posing a threat to journalism itself. “This is not just any competition law case — this is about the future of journalism,” said Alexandra Geese, a German Green member of the European Parliament. “Publishers don’t have the revenue because they don’t get traffic on their websites, and then Google’s algorithm decides what information we see,” she said. The plight of publishers proved hefty on the other side of the Atlantic too. In April, the federal judge overseeing the U.S. government’s case against Google ruled that the search giant had illegally maintained its monopoly over parts of the ad tech market.   A spokesperson for the company said that the firm disagrees with the Commission’s charges. | Nurphoto via Getty Images The Virginia district court held a two-week trial on remedies in September. The Trump administration has advocated a sale of the exchanges and an unwinding of Google’s 2008 merger with DoubleClick, through which it came to dominate the online ad market. Judge Leonie Brinkema will hear the government’s closing arguments on Nov. 17 and is expected to issue her verdict in the coming months. STARS ALIGN Viewed by Google’s critics, it’s the ideal set of circumstances for the Commission to push for a muscular structural remedy. “If you cannot go for structural remedies now, when the U.S. is on the same page, then you’re unlikely to ever do it,” said Crider. The route to a breakup may, however, be both legally and politically more challenging. Despite the technical alignment, and a disenchantment with the impact that past fines and behavioral remedies have had, the Commission still faces a “big hurdle” when it comes to the legal test, should it not be satisfied with Google’s remedy offer, said Witt. The U.S. legal system is more conducive to ordering breakups, both as a matter of law — judges have a wide scope to remedy a harm to the market — and in tradition, said Witt, noting that the U.S. government’s lawsuits to break up Google and Meta are rooted in precedents that don’t exist in Europe. Caught in the middle is Google, which should file its proposed remedies within 60 days of being served notice of the Commission decision that was announced on Sept. 5. A spokesperson for the company said that the firm disagrees with the Commission’s charges, and therefore with the notion that structural remedies are necessary. The firm is expected to lodge its appeal in the coming days. While Google has floated asset sales to the Commission over the course of the antitrust investigation, only to be rebuffed by Brussels, the firm does not intend to divest the entirety of its ad tech stack, according to a person familiar with the matter who was granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the case. Ultimately, what happens in Brussels may depend on what happens in the U.S. case. While a court-ordered divestiture of a chunk of Google’s ad tech business is conceivable, U.S. judges have shown themselves to be skeptical of structural remedies in recent months, said Lazar Radic, an assistant law professor at IE University in Madrid, who is affiliated with the big tech-friendly International Center for Law and Economics. “Behavioral alternatives are still on the table,” said Radic, of the U.S. case. The Commission will likely want to align itself with the U.S. should the Virginia court side with the Department of Justice, said Damien Geradin, legal counsel to the European Publishers Council — of which POLITICO parent Axel Springer is a member — that brought forward the case. Conversely, if the court opts for a weaker remedy than is being proposed, the Commission will be obliged to go further, he said. “This is the case where some structural remedies will be needed. I don’t think the [European Commission] can settle for less,” said Geradin.

BRUSSELS — A bid to revive a European football Super League is unlikely to find a sympathetic audience in Brussels despite the court victory the breakaway contest scored last week. A Spanish appeals court called foul on European football’s organizing body, ruling that UEFA had illegally stifled an attempt by a dozen top clubs from Spain, Italy and England to form their own contest. The EU “will continue to advocate for the strengthening of our sport model, our national leagues and grassroot sport,” Glenn Micallef, commissioner for culture and sport, said in a statement to POLITICO reacting to the judgment.  The Maltese commissioner said the EU executive would continue to work with UEFA and LaLiga — the European and Spanish federations found by the Madrid court to have breached EU competition law — in order to ensure that money is redistributed from the top clubs to amateur leagues. In June, the Spanish competition authority opened an antitrust investigation into UEFA’s conduct, a case which observers — including a former advocate general — think should be taken up by the European Commission. “[The Super League] contradicts the principles of the European Sports Model and collapsed in 2021 because it was a bad idea from the start,” said Micallef, noting that it was rejected by fans, players and governments across Europe at the time. The commissioner’s comment follows the European Parliament’s adoption of a resolution in October that stated the legislative body’s opposition to “breakaway competitions.” Both Real Madrid and A22 Sports Management have said that they will seek damages from UEFA following the court ruling. Both Real Madrid and A22 Sports Management have said that they will seek damages from UEFA following the court ruling. | Sven Hoppe/Getty Images Despite the Super League’s collapse in 2021, its backers have continued to try to organize a breakaway competition.  In response to last Wednesday’s judgment, A22 said that it had held extensive discussions with UEFA officials aimed at creating an open, cross-border football competition, but that the Switzerland-based federation “refused to pursue a compromise.” “UEFA is clearly legally obliged to recognise A22’s right to organize competitions on an equal footing with their own,” the firm said in a statement. UEFA has said that it will carefully review the judgment before deciding on further steps.

BRUSSELS — Europe is finally firing back at Elon Musk. Aerospace companies Airbus, Leonardo and Thales said Thursday they had reached a preliminary agreement to combine their space activities to create the kind of European champion that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has envisaged. Announcing “a leading European player in space,” the companies said they would combine their satellite and space systems manufacturing into a €6.5 billion business that will employ around 25,000 people across Europe.  The three-way deal seeks to create a challenger to Musk’s SpaceX — especially in low-earth orbit satellites of the type that power his Starlink internet service. SpaceX’s projected 2025 revenue is around $15 billion. The deal — initially named Project Bromo after a volcano in Indonesia — has been a long time coming. Talks among the three companies were complicated by the involvement of five governments as shareholders or partners. And winning antitrust approval was always going to be a tall order. France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the U.K. will all have an interest in the new company, which will be headquartered in Toulouse in southern France but will be split out into five different legal entities to preserve sovereign interests. The governance structure mirrors that of European missilemaker MDBA.  Airbus, the European aerospace giant, will own a 35 percent stake, while Leonardo of Italy and Thales of France will own 32.5 percent each. There will be a sole yet-to-be-named CEO and managing directors for each country, an Airbus spokesperson told POLITICO. French Economy Minister Roland Lescure hailed the announcement as “excellent news.” “The creation of a European satellite champion allows us to increase investment in research and innovation in this strategic sector and reinforce our sovereignty in a context of intense global competition,” he said in a post on Bluesky. Sounding rather less enthusiastic, a spokesperson for German Economy Minister Katherina Reiche said Berlin was following the possible consolidation of the European aerospace industry “with great interest” and was in touch with Airbus and its defense subsidiary. LEAGUE OF CHAMPIONS France and Germany have been vocal on the need to create continental champions — with industry chiefs from both countries recently issuing a joint appeal to Brussels to relax its merger rules to enable companies to gain scale and compete in a global setting. In a twist of irony, the deal involves a company — Airbus — that is widely seen as the only European corporate champion ever built. With roots dating back to 1970, Airbus was created in its current incarnation through a Franco-German-Spanish merger in 2000. France and Germany each own 10 percent stakes and Spain 4 percent. Italy has a 30 percent stake in Leonardo, which in turn owns 33 percent of Thales Alenia Space.  The new company will pool, build and develop “a comprehensive portfolio of complementary technologies and end-to-end solutions, from space infrastructure to services.” It is expected to generate annual synergies producing “mid triple digit million euro” operating income five years after closing, which is expected in 2027, according to a press release.  MERGER HURDLE The tie-up requires a green light from the Commission’s competition directorate, which will have to weigh the tension between its current rulebook for reviewing mergers and von der Leyen’s desire to pick European winners. The joint venture would compete with overseas players on satellites for commercial telecommunications. However, it would face scant competition for military and public procurement tenders in the EU, for example with the European Space Agency (ESA). These are typically restricted to home-grown bidders. Rolf Densing, ESA’s director of operations, has voiced concerns that the deal would leave the agency with limited options for sourcing satellite contracts. Germany’s OHB would be left as its last remaining competitor. OHB’s CEO Marco Fuchs has warned that the deal threatens to create a monopoly that would harm customers and European industry. That could herald a rerun of the tensions that the Commission faced when it blocked a Franco-German train industry merger between Siemens and Alstom in 2019 — although today the political environment is more favorable to the companies.  The Commission’s competition directorate is under pressure to broaden its views on mergers to take into account the bloc’s wider push for growth and an increased capacity to compete with U.S. and Chinese players. A review of the bloc’s merger guidelines is due next year, according to the Commission’s latest work program. Alexandre Léchenet in Paris and Tom Schmidtgen in Berlin contributed reporting.

Mario Monti is a former prime minister of Italy and EU commissioner. The European Commission sanctioned Google on Sept. 5, for abusing its dominant position in the bloc’s advertising technology market. The sanction had two components: a €2.95-billion fine, as well as the obligation of introducing changes to the company’s business model that will ensure the discontinuation of the abuse. In reaction, U.S. President Donald Trump issued a statement on how “Europe today ‘hit’ another great American company.” Taking to social media, he warned: “We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American ingenuity and, if it does, I will be forced to start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties being charged to these taxpaying American companies” — a proceeding that would presumably lead to the imposition of tariffs by the U.S. But, with all due respect, Trump is missing a key point: There is no discrimination here. The Commission sanctions cases of abuse of dominance that take place in the EU market, whether they’re carried out by EU or non-EU companies. More to the point, this is exactly what the U.S. antitrust authorities do with respect to the U.S. market. Incidentally, just yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission in Washington opened an investigation into the advertising practices of Google and Amazon, much along the lines set out by the Commission. We’ve been here before — and with the same players too. Let’s rewind 20 years to when I was Competition commissioner: In 2004, the Commission sanctioned Microsoft after a long investigation involving constructive discussions with Co-founder Bill Gates, then-CEO Steve Ballmer and then-General Counsel Brad Smith, among many others. Eventually, it imposed a fine of almost €500 million and, more importantly, ordered changes to the company’s business model. Interestingly, the complaints that prompted the investigation mainly came from U.S. companies, including the start-ups of the early days of the internet economy. They were complaining that Microsoft, which had — through its merits — legally earned a highly dominant position in operating systems for personal computers, was leveraging its position onto neighboring markets by obstructing other companies in a variety of ways, thus stifling innovation. In fact, I remember one such U.S. start-up — only about three years old when we began our investigation — had a rather intriguing name: Google. And I remember then-CEO Eric Schmidt visiting the Commission to praise our “courage.” The European Commission sanctioned Google on Sept. 5, for abusing its dominant position in the bloc’s advertising technology market. | Beata Zawrzel/Getty Images Incidentally, European corporate leaders, who sometimes urge the Commission to be less rigorous in its enforcement of competition rules, should also keep these past cases in mind — especially if they want a more innovative and competitive European economy, as we all do. Perhaps they should put the issue into a broader perspective and think twice. With its Microsoft decision, the Commission — followed by several other competition authorities across the world — allowed for the emergence of Google and other start-ups to become hugely successful. In fact, it put pressure on Microsoft to change its behavior and embrace a corporate culture building on collaboration rather than monopolization, supporting open-source projects and fostering partnerships with other companies. And many analysts believe it is these changes, stimulated by the past determination of competition authorities, that help explain Microsoft’s success over the last decade, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella. Against this backdrop, Trump’s view that EU competition policy is driven by discriminatory motivations against U.S. companies is simply unfounded. What’s true is that in any national or supranational context like the EU, institutions such as competition authorities and central banks have been set up in the eminent American tradition — dating back to the late 19th century (with the Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890) and the early 20th century (with the Federal Reserve Act of 1913) — precisely with the goal preventing these abuses, whether by companies in the marketplace or by governments abusing future generations via high inflation. Of course, it’s no surprise that leaders with an autocratic vision wouldn’t feel at ease with institutions entrusted by governments and parliaments of the past with preventing power from becoming absolute. But it was the U.S. that set postwar Germany, and later the EU, on this track. When occupying the country after World War II, America imposed the creation of two institutions on the newly born Federal Republic of Germany: First, the Deutsche Bundesbank — an independent central bank modeled on the Federal Reserve System, meant to avoid a repetition of the hyperinflation that contributed to the advent of Nazism. Second, the Bundeskartellamt competition authority, modeled on the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice, with the power to prevent the reemergence of cartels and trusts in heavy industry — another factor that had contributed to Hitler’s aggression and World War II. Then, at Germany’s request — and on the basis of the country’s democratic and economic resurgence — these two institutions were transposed to the EU level. So, today we must thank the U.S. not only for its decisive help in saving the continent from Nazism and Fascism and protecting it from Soviet Communism, but also for injecting postwar Europe with such powerful antidotes to the aberrations of the past. Perhaps Trump might forgive us if we aren’t ready to give up this great American legacy.

HOW DONALD TRUMP BECAME PRESIDENT OF EUROPE The U.S. president describes himself as the European Union’s de facto leader. Is he wrong? By NICHOLAS VINOCUR Illustration by Justin Metz for POLITICO European federalists, rejoice! The European Union finally has a bona fide president. The only problem: He lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C., aka the White House. U.S. President Donald Trump claimed the title during one of his recent off-the-cuff Oval Office banter sessions, asserting that EU leaders refer to him as “the president of Europe.”  The comment provoked knowing snickers in Brussels, where officials assured POLITICO that nobody they knew ever referred to Trump that way. But it also captured an embarrassing reality: EU leaders have effectively offered POTUS a seat at the head of their table. From the NATO summit in June, when Trump revealed a text message in which NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte called him “daddy,” to the EU-U.S. trade accord signed in Scotland where EU leaders consented to a deal so lopsided in Washington’s favor it resembled a surrender, it looks like Trump has a point. Never since the creation of the EU has a U.S. president wielded such direct influence over European affairs. And never have the leaders of the EU’s 27 countries appeared so willing — desperate even — to hold up a U.S. president as a figure of authority to be praised, cajoled, lobbied, courted, but never openly contradicted. In off-the-record briefings, EU officials frame their deference to Trump as a necessary ploy to keep him engaged in European security and Ukraine’s future. But there’s no indication that, having supposedly done what it takes to keep the U.S. on side, Europe’s leaders are now trying to reassert their authority. On the contrary, EU leaders now appear to be offering Trump a role in their affairs even when he hasn’t asked for it. A case in point: When a group of leaders traveled to Washington this summer to urge Trump to apply pressure to Russian President Vladimir Putin (he ignored them), they also asked him to prevail on his “friend,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to lift his block on Ukraine’s eventual membership to the EU, per a Bloomberg report. Trump duly picked up the phone. And while there’s no suggestion Orbán changed his tune on Ukraine, the fact that EU leaders felt compelled to ask the U.S. president to unstick one of their internal conflicts only further secured his status as a de facto European powerbroker. “He may never be Europe’s president, but he can be its godfather,” said one EU diplomat who, like others in this piece, was granted anonymity to speak candidly. “The appropriate analogy is more criminal. We’re dealing with a mafia boss exerting extortionate influence over the businesses he purports to protect.” “BRUSSELS EFFECT” It was not long ago that the EU could describe itself credibly as a trade behemoth and a “regulatory superpower” able to command respect thanks to its vast consumer market and legal reach. EU leaders boasted of a “Brussels effect” that bent the behavior of corporations or foreign governments to European legal standards, even if they weren’t members of the bloc. Anthony Gardner, a former U.S. ambassador to the EU, recalls that when Washington was negotiating a trade deal with the EU known as the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the 2010s, the U.S. considered Europe to be an equal peer. “Since the founding of the EEC [European Economic Community], America’s position was that we want a strong Europe,” said Gardner. “And we had lots of disagreements with the EU, particularly on trade. But the way to deal with those is not through bullying.” One sign of the EU’s confidence was its willingness to take on the U.S.’s biggest companies, as it did in 2001 when the European Commission blocked a planned $42 billion acquisition of Honeywell by General Electric. That was the beginning of more than a decade of assertive competition policy, with the bloc’s heavyweight officials like former antitrust czar Margrethe Vestager grandstanding in front of the world’s press and threatening to break up Google on antitrust grounds, or forcing Apple to pay back an eye-watering €13 billion over its tax arrangements in Ireland. Compare that to last week, when the Commission was expected to fine Google for its search advertising practices. The decision was at first delayed at the request of EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič, then quietly publicized via a press release and an explanatory video on Friday afternoon that did not feature the commissioner in charge, Teresa Ribera. (Neither move prevented Trump from announcing in a Truth Social post that his “Administration will NOT allow these discriminatory actions to stand.”) “I’ve never seen anything like this in my entire career at the Commission,” said a senior Commission official. “Trump is inside the machine at this point.” Since Trump’s reelection, EU leaders have been exceptionally careful in how they speak about the U.S. president, with two options seemingly available: Silence, or praise. “At this moment, Estonia and many European countries support what Trump is doing,” Estonian President Alar Karis said in a recent POLITICO interview, referring to the U.S. president’s efforts to push Putin toward a peace with Ukraine. Never mind the fact that the Pentagon recently axed security funding for countries like his and is expected to follow up by reducing U.S. troop numbers there too. It became fashionable among the cognoscenti ahead of the NATO summit in June to claim that the U.S. president had done Europe a favor by casting doubt on his commitment to the military alliance. Only by Trump’s cold kiss, the thinking went, would this Sleeping Beauty of a continent ever “wake up.” As for Mark Rutte’s “Daddy” comment — humiliatingly leaked from a private text message exchange by Trump himself — it was a clever ploy to appeal to the U.S. president’s ego. Unfortunately for EU leaders, the pretense that Trump somehow has Europe’s interests in mind and was merely doling out “tough love” was dispelled just a few months later when European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen signed the EU-U.S. trade deal in Turnberry, Scotland. This time, there was no disguising the true nature of what had transpired between Europe and the U.S.  The wolfish grins of Trump White House bigwigs Stephen Miller and Howard Lutnick on the official signing photograph told the whole story: Trump had laid down brutal, humiliating terms. Europe had effectively surrendered. Many in Brussels interpreted the deal in the same way.  “You won’t hear me use that word [negotiation]” to describe what transpired between Europe and the U.S., veteran EU trade negotiator Sabine Weyand told a recent panel. BLAME GAME As EU officials settle in for la rentrée, the shock of these past few months has led to finger-pointing: Does the blame for this double whammy of subjugation lie with the European Commission, or with the EU’s 27 heads of state and government? It’s tempting to point to the Commission, which, after all, has an exclusive mandate to negotiate trade deals on behalf of all EU countries. In the days leading up to Turnberry, von der Leyen and her top trade official, Šefčovič, could theoretically have taken a page from China’s playbook and struck back at the U.S. threat of 15 percent tariffs with tariffs of their own. Indeed, the EU’s trade arsenal is fully stocked with the means to do so, not least via the Anti-Coercion Instrument designed for precisely such situations. But to heap all the blame on the doorstep of the Berlaymont isn’t fair, argues Gardner, the former U.S. ambassador to the EU. The real architects of Europe’s summer of humiliation are the leaders who prevailed on the Commission to go along with Trump’s demands, whatever the cost. “What I am saying is that the member states have shown a lack of solidarity at a crucial moment,” said Gardner. The consequences of this collective failure, he warns, may reverberate for years, if not decades: “The first message here is that the most effective way for big trading blocs to win over Europe is to ruthlessly use leverage to divide the European Union. The second message, which maybe wasn’t fully taken into account: Member states may be asking themselves: What is the EU good for if it can’t provide a shield on trade?” The same goes for regulation: Trump’s repeated threates of tariffs if the bloc dares to test his patience reveal the limits of EU sovereignty when it comes to the so-called “Brussels effect.” And that leaves the bloc in desperate need of a new narrative about its role on the world stage. The reasons why EU leaders decided to fold, rather than fight, are plain to see. They were laid bare in a recent speech by António Costa, who as president of the European Council convenes the EU leaders in their summits. “Escalating tensions with a key ally over tariffs, while our eastern border is under threat, would have been an imprudent risk,” Costa said. But none of this answers the question: What now?  If Europe has already ceded so much to Trump, is the entire bloc condemned to vassalhood or, as some commentators have prophesied, a “century of humiliation” on par with the fate of the Qing dynasty following China’s Opium Wars with Britain? Possibly — though a century seems like a long time.  Among the steaming heaps of garbage, there are a few green shoots. To wit: The fact that polls indicate that the average European wants a tougher, more sovereign Europe and blames leaders rather than “the EU” for failing to deliver faster on benchmarks like a “European Defense Union.” Europe’s current leaders (with a few exceptions, such as Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen) may be united in their embrace of Trump as Europe’s Godfather. But there is one Cassandra-like figure who refuses to let them off the hook for failing to deliver a more sovereign EU — former Italian prime minister and European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi. Author of the “Draghi Report,” a tome of recommendations on how Europe can pull itself back up by the bootstraps, the 78-year-old is refusing to go quietly into retirement. On the contrary, in one speech after another, he’s reminding EU leaders that they were the ones to ask for the report they are now ignoring. Speaking in Rimini, Italy, last month, Europe’s Cassandra summed up the challenge facing the Old World: In the past, he said, “the EU could act primarily as a regulator and arbiter, avoiding the harder question of political integration.” “To face today’s challenges, the European Union must transform itself from a spectator — or at best a supporting actor — into a protagonist.”

BRUSSELS — Ursula von der Leyen is beefing up competition capacity in her Cabinet, as antitrust gets dragged deeper into trade tensions with the United States and the EU continues to strive for a bloc-wide industrial policy. Michele Piergiovanni, an Italian official who advised former competition chief Margrethe Vestager, is set to join the European Commission president’s Cabinet, POLITICO first reported on Wednesday. A Commission spokesperson confirmed the move and said that Piergiovanni will advise the president on competition and economic issues. The move could signal an imminent departure of von der Leyen’s current antitrust and digital adviser, Anthony Whelan. The seasoned Irish official was appointed last year to lead the competition directorate’s state aid department, but never took up the role as he has been jealously guarded by the president’s Cabinet.  Piergiovanni’s appointment also signals the president’s heightened attention to a policy area that has become increasingly political, both externally, in the context of transatlantic trade tensions, and internally, as the bloc looks to revisit rules on mergers and public industry funding in an effort to boost economic growth. Earlier this week, the Commission halted an antitrust decision targeting search giant Google under U.S. pressure in trade talks. The EU executive is also under increasing pressure to bend rules on public industry funding — or state aid — to allow EU countries to funnel cash into their industries. There are also calls to relax merger rules to allow companies to become bigger and compete on the global stage as European champions. Piergiovanni, who joined the Commission in 2011 from a top American law firm in Brussels, knows a thing or two about European champions. In 2018, he was appointed to lead the competition department’s work on the most controversial merger of the decade, the Franco-German attempt to merge Siemens and Alstom to create a continental rail giant, which was ultimately blocked. The decision to deny the deal infuriated France and Germany while becoming the poster child of the competition directorate’s strict enforcement.  A loyal and rigorous official from Italy’s northern coastal region of Liguria, Piergiovanni will be a solid link between the top of the EU executive and the competition directorate, which recently said goodbye to its top official, Frenchman Olivier Guersent. “Don’t scratch the Rolls-Royce,” were Guersent’s parting words to his successor. The Rolls-Royce, is, of course, DG COMP, which the official described as the most prized directorate to work in, but also an area which should remain immune from political interference and corporate pressure. Giovanna Faggionato contributed to this report.

A U.S. federal judge on Tuesday refused to break up Google for monopolizing the online search and ad markets, and instead imposed lesser restrictions on the tech company’s day-to-day operations. District Judge Amit Mehta in Washington rejected the Justice Department’s request to force the $2.5 trillion company to spin off its Chrome browser and Android products. While Google dodged the most severe possible outcome, the judge ordered that the company must share some of its search data with competitors, a penalty that was still narrowed in scope from what the government asked for. Breaking up Google would have immediately made this the largest antitrust remedy in modern history, with the case drawing comparisons to the 1984 breakup of AT&T and the government’s failed bid to split Microsoft in the early 2000s. The decision offers a glimmer of hope for other tech companies facing potential breakups of their businesses, including Meta, Amazon and Apple. Mehta ruled last August that Google locked up 90 percent of the internet search market through a partnership with Apple to be the default search provider on its Safari web browser. Google had similar agreements with handset makers and mobile carriers like Samsung and Verizon. Mehta also found that Google illegally monopolized the market for ads displayed next to search results. That decision came after a 10-week bench trial, and set up what’s called a remedy trial, which took place in April. It was during that second trial that the Justice Department asked Mehta to break up the company to resolve its illegal monopoly. The case spanned two administrations, starting under President Donald Trump’s first term, going to trial under former President Joe Biden, and now Google has pledged to appeal in Trump’s second administration. Google also faces another remedy trial in September for maintaining what a federal judge ruled in April was an illegal monopoly in the almost $300 million U.S. market for digital ads. Judge Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia said Google maintained its monopoly by tying together its ad server business, used by online publishers to manage ad sales on their sites, and its ad exchange business, which auctions off digital advertising space on websites. Google claimed it won half the case and vowed to appeal the other half. Other major antitrust cases remain in the wings that could also drastically reshape the way the tech industry operates in America and across the globe. These cases and investigations come as lawmakers and regulators are worried about tech companies cornering the market for artificial intelligence in a similar fashion as what happened with e-commerce, social media and online search. Amazon is slated to go to trial in early 2027 over claims it squashes competition to rip off sellers and consumers while peddling a subpar shopping experience riddled with confusing advertisements. Apple faces claims its billions of iPhones sold since 2007 were designed to lock users into its products while raising costs for consumers, developers and artists, among others. Depositions and discovery in that case are scheduled through early 2027. And chipmaker Nvidia is the subject of a Justice Department investigation over its purchase of AI start-up Run:ai.