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Can European leadership finally confront the US administration and US big tech? The current inaction is not just a regulatory or financial failure: it represents a ethical collapse. This situation calls into question the very foundation of the EU's democratic identity. 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 right to govern its own online environment according to its own laws.

How We Got Here

First, it's important to review the events leading here. During the summer, the EU executive agreed to a humiliating deal with Trump that established a ongoing 15% tariff on EU exports to the US. The EU received nothing in return. The indignity was compounded because the commission also agreed to provide well over $1tn to the US through investments and acquisitions of resources and defense equipment. This arrangement revealed the vulnerability of Europe's dependence on the US.

Less than a month later, Trump warned of severe new tariffs if the EU implemented its laws against American companies on its own soil.

Europe's Claim vs. Reality

Over many years EU officials has claimed that its market of 450 million affluent people gives it significant leverage in trade negotiations. But in the six weeks since the US warning, Europe has taken minimal action. Not a single retaliatory measure has been implemented. No activation of the new trade defense tool, the often described “trade bazooka” that Brussels once vowed would be its ultimate shield against external coercion.

Instead, we have polite statements and a penalty on Google of under 1% of its yearly income for established anticompetitive behaviour, already proven in US courts, that enabled it to “exploit” its market leadership in the EU's advertising market.

American Strategy

The US, under the current administration, has signaled its goals: it no longer seeks to strengthen EU institutions. It aims to weaken it. An official publication published on the US Department of State's website, written in paranoid, inflammatory rhetoric similar to Viktor Orbán's speeches, charged the EU of “systematic efforts against Western civilization itself”. It condemned alleged limitations on political groups across the EU, from German political movements to Polish organizations.

Available Tools for Response

What is to be done? The EU's anti-coercion instrument works by calculating the degree of the coercion and imposing retaliatory measures. Provided EU member states agree, the EU executive could remove US goods and services out of Europe's market, or apply taxes on them. It can strip their intellectual property rights, block their financial activities and require compensation as a condition of re-entry to EU economic space.

The tool is not only financial response; it is a statement of determination. It was designed to signal that the EU would always resist foreign coercion. But now, when it is most crucial, it lies unused. It is not the powerful weapon promised. It is a paperweight.

Internal Disagreements

In the months preceding the transatlantic agreement, several EU states talked tough in official statements, but did not advocate the instrument to be activated. Others, including Ireland and Italy, openly advocated a softer European line.

A softer line is the worst option that Europe needs. It must implement its regulations, even when they are inconvenient. In addition to the anti-coercion instrument, the EU should disable social media “recommended”-style algorithms, that suggest content the user has not requested, on European soil until they are proven safe for democratic societies.

Broader Digital Strategy

Citizens – not the algorithms of foreign oligarchs beholden to foreign interests – should have the freedom to make independent choices about what they see and share online.

Trump is pressuring the EU to water down its online regulations. But now especially important, Europe should hold American technology companies responsible for distorting competition, snooping on Europeans, and targeting minors. EU authorities must ensure Ireland accountable for not implementing Europe's digital rules on American companies.

Enforcement is not enough, however. Europe must progressively replace all foreign “major technology” services and computing infrastructure over the coming years with homegrown alternatives.

Risks of Delay

The real danger of the current situation is that if the EU does not act now, it will never act again. The more delay occurs, 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 laws are unenforceable, its institutions not sovereign, its political system not self-determined.

When that happens, the route to undemocratic rule becomes inevitable, through algorithmic manipulation on social media and the acceptance of misinformation. If the EU continues to cower, it will be drawn into that same decline. Europe must act now, not just to push back against Trump, but to create space for itself to exist as a free and autonomous power.

International Perspective

And in doing so, it must make a statement that the international community can see. In North America, South Korea and Japan, democratic nations are watching. They are wondering if the EU, the remaining stronghold of international cooperation, will stand against foreign pressure or yield to it.

They are inquiring whether democratic institutions can endure when the most powerful democracy in the world abandons them. They also see the example of Brazilian leadership, who faced down Trump and showed that the approach to address a bully is to respond firmly.

But if the EU hesitates, if it continues to issue polite statements, to impose token fines, to hope for a improved situation, it will have already lost.