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Can European leadership finally confront Donald Trump and US big tech? The current lack of response is not just a regulatory or financial failure: it represents a moral failure. This situation undermines the core principles of the EU's political sovereignty. What is at stake is not only the future of companies like Google or Meta, but the fundamental idea that the European Union has the authority to regulate its own online environment according to its own regulations.

Background Context

First, consider the events leading here. During the summer, the EU executive accepted a humiliating deal with the US that locked in a permanent 15% tariff on EU exports to the US. The EU gained no concessions in return. The indignity was compounded because the EU also consented to provide more than $1tn to the US through investments and acquisitions of energy and defense equipment. The deal exposed the vulnerability of the EU's dependence on the US.

Less than a month later, Trump threatened crushing additional taxes if Europe enforced its regulations against US tech firms on its own soil.

The Gap Between Rhetoric and Action

For decades EU officials has claimed that its market of 450 million affluent people gives it significant sway in trade negotiations. But in the month and a half since Trump's threat, the EU has taken minimal action. Not a single counter-action has been implemented. No invocation of the recently created anti-coercion instrument, the often described “trade bazooka” that the EU once vowed would be its primary shield against external coercion.

Instead, we have diplomatic language and a penalty on Google of less than 1% of its yearly income for longstanding market abuses, already proven in US courts, that allowed it to “abuse” its market leadership in the EU's advertising market.

American Strategy

The US, under the current administration, has made its intentions clear: it no longer seeks to support EU institutions. It seeks to undermine it. A recent essay released on the US State Department website, written in paranoid, inflammatory rhetoric reminiscent of Viktor Orbán's speeches, charged the EU of “systematic efforts against Western civilization itself”. It criticized supposed limitations on authoritarian parties across the EU, from German political movements to PiS in Poland.

The Solution: Anti-Coercion Instrument

What is to be done? Europe's trade defense mechanism works by calculating the extent of the coercion and applying counter-actions. Provided EU member states consent, the EU executive could kick US products out of the EU market, or impose taxes on them. It can strip their intellectual property rights, prevent their financial activities and demand compensation as a requirement of re-entry to EU economic space.

The tool is not only financial response; it is a statement of determination. It was designed to demonstrate that the EU would never tolerate external pressure. But now, when it is most crucial, it remains inactive. It is not a bazooka. It is a symbolic object.

Political Divisions

In the months leading to the transatlantic agreement, several EU states used strong language in public, but did not advocate the instrument to be activated. Some nations, such as Ireland and Italy, publicly pushed for more conciliatory approach.

Compromise is the last thing that the EU needs. It must enforce its laws, even when they are inconvenient. Along with the trade tool, the EU should disable social media “for you”-style algorithms, that recommend content the user has not requested, on EU territory until they are demonstrated to be secure for democracy.

Comprehensive Approach

The public – not the algorithms of foreign oligarchs serving foreign interests – should have the freedom to make independent choices about what they view and share online.

Trump is pressuring the EU to weaken its online regulations. But now more than ever, the EU should make American technology companies accountable for anti-competitive market rigging, surveillance practices, and preying on our children. Brussels must ensure certain member states accountable for not implementing Europe's digital rules on US firms.

Regulatory action is not enough, however. The EU must gradually substitute all foreign “big tech” platforms and computing infrastructure over the coming years with homegrown alternatives.

The Danger of Inaction

The real danger of this moment is that if the EU does not take immediate action, it will never act again. The longer it waits, the deeper the erosion of its self-belief in itself. The more it will believe that resistance is futile. The more it will accept that its regulations are not binding, its institutions not sovereign, its democracy not self-determined.

When that happens, the route to undemocratic rule becomes unavoidable, through automated influence on social media and the normalisation of misinformation. If the EU continues to remain passive, it will be drawn into that same decline. The EU must take immediate steps, not just to push back against Trump, but to create space for itself to exist as a independent and sovereign entity.

International Perspective

And in taking action, it must plant a flag that the rest of the world can see. In North America, Asia and Japan, democratic nations are watching. They are questioning if the EU, the last bastion of international cooperation, will resist external influence or yield to it.

They are inquiring whether democratic institutions can survive when the leading democratic nation in the world abandons them. They also see the example of Brazilian leadership, who confronted Trump and demonstrated that the approach to deal with a aggressor is to respond firmly.

But if the EU delays, if it continues to issue polite statements, to levy symbolic penalties, to anticipate a improved situation, it will have already lost.