EU Regulation harms American Innovation

TECH • TELECOM • Environmental • Other

European Union (EU) bureaucrats are increasingly using aggressive regulatory tools to target large and successful companies, many of them American. Although framed as efforts to promote competition or consumer protection, these policies often punish innovation, undermine successful business models, and create vast new costs that are ultimately passed on to American consumers. Learn more about what’s at risk and what we’re working on in this space below.

TECHNOLOGY

HOW THE EUROPEAN UNION'S TECH POLICY THREATENS CONSUMERS

A reliable maxim of tech policy is to avoid copying the Europeans, and the latest data-sharing proposal ought to convince American officials to abandon any thought of advancing a similar measure.

AMERICAN TECH IS UNDER SIEGE IN EUROPE

EU bureaucrats will stop at nothing to punish large and successful companies that improve consumers’ lives. To make matters worse, the EU’s regulatory overdrive is disproportionately targeting U.S. companies and American consumers.

EUROPEAN STYLE CORPORATE STRANGULATION HARDLY WORKS IN THE U.S.

Regulators on both sides of the Atlantic ought to celebrate companies like Amazon and remove barriers to serving consumers. The opposite approach has not worked in Europe, and it certainly won’t work in the U.S.

THE CONSEQUENCES OF EUROPE’S TECH-POLICY OVERREACHES

Europeans have found tech policy to be a fraught endeavor. Eager to regulate, lawmakers and bureaucrats in the United Kingdom and EU have smothered the innovative energies of companies and, as importantly, harmed their citizens.

DON'T FORGET EUROPE'S REGULATORY WAR ON U.S. TECH

As foreign nations eventually find themselves behind in this technological race, they will resort to extracting value out of American innovation through hostile regulation, rather than increased cooperation. Smoothing out these differences through proactive trade diplomacy should be a key priority of any administration that looks to secure America’s position as the technological leader of the world.

THE EU NEEDS TO KICK ITS ADDICTION TO TECH REGULATION

Brussels bureaucrats never seem to pass up to an opportunity to micromanage every market they can get their hands on. And having regulated its own tech sector into insignificance, American tech firms are the new object of their bureaucratic excess.

TAXPAYER WATCHDOG GROUP CONDEMNS EU’S X FINE

EU regulators are no friends of the American economy or of free speech online. President Trump has courageously pushed back against foreign attempts to punish U.S. companies for being successful. To remain the world’s leader in technological innovation, American policymakers must follow the President’s lead and stand up to rogue regulators across the Atlantic.

PRESIDENT TRUMP IS RIGHT TO FIGHT EUROPEAN TECH OVERREACH

The Old World model of state management must not be permitted to hold back the advance of the freedom-fueled dynamism of the New World.

WHAT AMERICAN LAWMAKERS SHOULD LEARN FROM EUROPE’S NEWEST TECH-POLICY BLUNDERS

For American lawmakers, European tech regulations provide the inverse of a handbook. If an idea has been attempted there, it most likely shouldn’t be replicated stateside.

PRESIDENT TRUMP SHOULD KEEP STANDING UP TO EUROPE’S ANTI-TECH AGENDA FOR U.S. CONSUMERS AND TAXPAYERS

President Trump must continue on his course and ensure that European regulators do not devastate the profitability and utility of American tech platforms. Now is not the time to take our foot off the gas pedal of deregulation.

TAXPAYER WATCHDOG SLAMS EUROPEAN CRUSADE AGAINST U.S. TECH CHAMPIONS

The EU’s targeting of U.S. tech companies serves no public good. In reality, it will harm consumers by constraining choice and dampening innovation. The DMA is an overbearing, yet always-moving, regulatory target for tech companies to hit.

EXPERTS WARN AGAINST REGULATORY OVERREACH AT TPA WEBINAR ON GLOBAL DIGITAL POLICY

Experts from the U.S., Canada, and Europe gathered virtually for a webinar to discuss growing concerns over the global spread of heavy-handed digital regulations. Titled “The Global Grip on Digital Freedom,” the event focused on the consequences of regulatory frameworks like the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Canada’s Digital Services Tax, and how these measures are impacting innovation, consumers, and small developers.

DAVID MCGARRY ON EUROPEAN ONLINE CENSORSHIP

The EU’s Digital Services Act was enacted in 2022 and just went into effect. It seeks to regulate online platforms by addressing illegal content, including hate speech and disinformation. How do you define hate speech and disinformation? That’s one of the things discussed in this podcast.

AMERICANS SHOULD REJECT EUROPEAN-STYLE ONLINE CENSORSHIP

In the online age, America must recommit itself to its heritage. It must buttress its fortifications of free speech, not suffer them to decay. The European model must be spurned.

EUROPE SHOWS US WHAT HAPPENS WHEN BUREAUCRATS WIN

Europe doesn’t need more commissions or consultations. It needs courage to scrap bad laws and let innovation breathe again. If Brussels wants to compete with America, it should stop punishing success and start trusting its own entrepreneurs.

TELECOMMUNICATIONS

THE EU IS FAR BEHIND IN SATELLITES, AND DIGGING A DEEPER HOLE

Satellite technology is critical to digital and telecommunications progress around the globe. EU regulators must embrace markets and end the failed policies holding this progress back. It can start by divesting—and instructing member-states to divest—in its companies, allowing these businesses to rise and fall on their own merits.

BRUSSELS BUREAUCRATS USE DIRTY TRICKS AGAINST AMERICAN COMPETITORS

Brussels bureaucrats and EU member states can regulate their own economies as they wish. But when European officials use predatory laws to get a one-up over the pesky Americans, the U.S. has every right to express concern.

ENVIRONMENTAL

EU ‘DEFORESTATION’ RULES ARE HITTING U.S. PRODUCERS, CONSUMERS

Implementation of the EU’s 2023 Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) will soon affect small and medium-size firms, and American consumers will feel the effect from the other side of the Atlantic. The EU should cut these harmful regulations down to size and focus on pro-growth measures to help the environment.

OTHER

THE EU’S WAR ON HARM REDUCTION–A PUBLIC HEALTH CALAMITY

If the EU is serious about beating cancer, reducing noncommunicable diseases, and achieving a smoke-free future, it must embrace tobacco harm reduction, not destroy it.

THE HEALTH HARMING SNUS BAN DECEPTION CONTINUES

The history of the EU ban on snus is one of manufactured moral panic, corruptly falsified documents, outrageous gerrymandering of public consultations, scientific criminality and downright lies.