European Union Reevaluates Big Tech Cases Independent of Trump Administration Influence

January 15, 2025 TruthUSA

The European Union is also considering expanding its investigation into whether social media platform X breached its content moderation rulebook.

The European Commission said it was assessing its cases against Apple, Google, Facebook, and X but that the upcoming Trump administration would not affect its commitment to enforcing its tech laws.

Brussels was asked if it was reassessing its investigations of Big Tech because U.S. groups have urged President-elect Donald Trump, who is entering the White House on Jan. 20, to intervene.

However, the EU said that it was assessing rather than reviewing its cases and that it was not linked to Trump’s arrival, reiterating its commitment to regulating Big Tech.

Investigations

Last year, the European Commission opened investigations into Alphabet, Apple, and Meta for potentially breaching the Digital Markets Act (DMA), legislation that imposes antitrust obligations.

At the time, former European Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said, “We are concerned Alphabet, Apple, and Meta are not meeting their obligations; e.g., Apple and Alphabet still charge recurring fees to app developers [and] Meta offers no real choice for users to opt out of data combination.”

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg on Friday told The Joe Rogan podcast that the EU had forced U.S. tech companies operating in Europe to pay “more than $30 billion” in penalties for legal violations over the past 10 or 20 years.

He said he believed that the European Commission’s application of competition rules is “almost like a tariff” on U.S. tech companies.

The Financial Times reported on Jan. 14, using anonymous sources, that the European Commission was reassessing its investigations of Big Tech.

However, commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said at the EU’s executive’s daily briefing on Jan. 14 that it has “upcoming meetings to assess maturity of cases, to assess the allocation of resources and the general readiness of the investigation.”

Expanding Investigation

On Jan 13, Bloomberg reported that the European Union was considering expanding its investigation into whether Elon Musk’s social media network X breached its content moderation rulebook.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) is an EU-wide 2022 regulation that regulates the obligations of digital services. Part of this requires social media platforms to remove, and take other specified steps to deal with, what is deemed disinformation.

The commission opened formal proceedings in December 2024 to assess whether X may have breached the DSA.

“We are currently assessing if the scope is large enough,” European Commission Vice President Henna Virkkunen told Bloomberg TV when asked about the ongoing X probe.

The EU has been scrutinizing the social media platform in recent weeks as Musk, now an adviser to President-elect Donald Trump, hosted Alice Weidel, the leader of Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany party, in a live interview on X. Musk also endorsed the party.

A commission spokeswoman told The Epoch Times by email that there is a “general assessment of the ongoing case“ and ”whether additional steps could be taken within the current proceedings.”

‘Fully Enforcing’

Virkkunen told reporters on Jan. 15 that she fully intends to enforce rules governing social media and other large online platforms.

“There haven’t been any delays,” she said.

Last week, the European Commission reacted with reservation to Meta’s decision to replace fact-checkers in the United States with a new community notes system, sparking a debate about how the tech giant will fare under the European Union’s strict internet controls.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg called Europe a place of “censorship.”

“Europe has an ever-increasing number of laws, institutionalizing censorship, and making it difficult to build anything innovative there,” he said.

“We are fully enforcing the DMA and the DSA,” said Virkkunen, adding that the DSA was protecting, rather than limiting, freedom of speech.

X’s Global Government Affairs team has not yet commented on Virkkunen’s comments.

On Jan. 9, the CEO of X, Linda Yaccarino, wrote on X that she believed that the move by EU regulators is “clear, unlawful retaliation for allowing an open discussion for all to hear.”

Reuters and Indrajit Basu contributed to this report.

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