The open letter, addressed to the President of the European Commission, urges EU officials to continue to regulate big US tech companies that are aligning themselves with Trump.
European Digital Rights — or EDRi — a Brussels-based activist group that calls itself “the biggest European network defending rights and freedoms online” has put together an open letter to Ursula von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission, which is the primary executive arm of the European Union. The letter urges her to not let Trump and the tech bros who have adopted him (my description, not theirs) bully the EU into not enforcing its Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act.
Lumping the two acts together isn’t unusual in the world of EU digital politics. Both were introduced to the European Parliament at the same time, and both were adopted in 2022. The DSA is primarily meant to “govern the content moderation practices of social media platforms” and address illegal content, while the DMA is something of a European anti-trust law, tasked with promoting digital competition by preventing large companies from abusing monopoly power, and by paving the road for new players to enter the market.
Both laws are mainly aimed at large, Fortune 500 scale corporations, and have been a thorn in the side of US tech giants since the laws went into effect several years back.
“We have observed with increasing concern how the CEOs of US big tech companies have taken turns to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration in part to mobilize it against EU rules such as the Digital Markets Act, competition policy, and the Digital Services Act,” the two-page letter says near its beginning, and then goes on to name some names.
“The CEO of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, has publicly stated that the company would seek to work with President Trump to undermine laws in the EU, directly targeting the DSA but also competition policy enforcement. Similarly, Apple CEO Tim Cook has reportedly petitioned Trump directly to spare him the fines imposed by the EU following a state aid investigation.”
In addition to President von der Leyen, the letter is addressed to Teresa Ribera, the EU’s Executive Vice President for a Clean, Just and Competitive Transition, who’s tasked with ensuring that Europe stays on track for its goals; and Henna Maria Virkkunen, the European Commission’s Executive Vice President for Technological Sovereignty, Security and Democracy.
International Response
It’s unclear at present whether the letter is still open for signers (it was late afternoon in Belgium when we reached out to EDRi via email — so we’re likely to not get a response by the time this article is ready to go to press), but the 42 signatures already on the document are not only from organizations located in the EU, but also many US organizations, as well as other organizations that identify themselves as “global”.
“Big tech CEOs trying to curry favor with the US administration is no surprise,” the letter says. “In fact, big tech companies have achieved their immense market dominance in part by wielding their power to avoid complying with laws such as data protection and competition policy in the past. They have all heavily lobbied against the EU’s use of competition tools and the DMA since the proposal was first discussed. Apple and Meta also tried to block DMA enforcement with legal actions against the Commission questioning their gatekeeper status.
“Now big tech CEOs are seeking to mobilize the Trump administration to protect their ability to exploit users and businesses dependent on them, including app developers, publishers, advertisers, and others, all while continuing to stifle potential competitors. This exploitation has not only created an unfair digital economy; it has directly impacted the dynamism and pluralism of Europe’s economy.”
A Focus on Unregulated Big Tech
Although it’s pretty much a given that if Trump and his supporters in Washington say anything at all about EDRi’s letter, it’ll be to accuse the organization and the letter’s writers — and maybe all of Europe and the European Union — of being anti-American, in spite of the fact that the writers go out of their way to say that the United States is not the target of their criticism.
“This is not a clash between the EU and the US, but rather an attack from big tech against everyone else,” they write.
“That is why we ask you today for bold political leadership to not only stand up to the bullying from big tech firms but also to prioritize strong enforcement of the digital rulebook. In addition, we call on you to invest in a diverse and decentralized digital sphere that is part of a sovereign digital commons and not owned and governed by proprietary technology corporations, regardless of where they reside.”
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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