The EU faces a new political actor: the tech magnates

BrusselsDonald Trump is a nightmare for the European Union. The US president has not only declared a trade war on the European bloc and, among other things, threatened to invade EU sovereign territory, but he also intends to change European legislation and even the continent's way of life. This is an objective that the Trump administration has openly stated. has found in the American technology magnateswho wield considerable influence over European public opinion—the perfect allies.

Tensions between tech magnates and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez have suddenly escalated this past week, but it's an offensive that the owners of these tech giants launched some time ago. The most belligerent is Elon Musk, the owner of X, who worked on the Trump campaign and administration.

The European Commission has long denounced the former Twitter for having opaque algorithms, preventing EU authorities from properly regulating it. Thus, Musk, who also owns Tesla and markets X as a social network without editorial lines and a guarantor of freedom of expression, benefits and promotes far-right content. Musk and his company even explicitly supported the far-right in the last German federal elections.Alternative for Germany (AfD, in its German acronym). Brussels considered it outright political interference.

Although in a different way, the mass message sent this Wednesday by the founder of Telegram, the Russian Pavel Durov, to users of his social network against the measures announced by Pedro Sánchez is also clearly a gesture of political pressure. "The government of Pedro Sánchez is pushing through dangerous new regulations that threaten your freedoms on the internet [...], they could turn Spain into a surveillance state under the pretext of protection," he stated in the text.

Beyond Musk's case, the rest of the American tech oligarchs are also more discreetly colluding with Trump to get the European Union to deregulate the digital sector in the bloc's market, from which they reap billions in profits. Often, when Brussels opens an investigation or imposes a sanction for violating European regulations, they harshly criticize the EU executive and portray themselves as victims of European interventionism, which they claim aims to prevent oligopolies and enforce digital rights.

The complaints don't just come from these companies; the Trump administration itself relentlessly attacks and questions the regulatory framework of an ally like the EU and its judicial system. The last time the White House closed ranks with the tech oligarchs was, of course, following a European Commission fine levied against X. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it "a direct attack" on "the entire American people."

Aside from the United States, Brussels has also consistently expressed concern about the pro-Russian propaganda that the Kremlin manages to disseminate through social media, especially during the war in Ukraine. Nor is it a secret that Trump has a close relationship with Vladimir Putin, or that the European far right has ties to the Russian authoritarian regime.

A red line for the EU

Since Trump returned to the White House, he has relentlessly pressured European leaders to deregulate the European digital market, but this is currently a red line for the EU. European allies have yielded in the trade war and on the Pentagon's demands to raise military spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP). However, no European leader has shown the slightest openness to accepting regulatory changes in the digital sector at the behest of the United States. In fact, at the end of last year, when the White House increased pressure on the EU to deregulate the digital market and even threatened new tariffs, Brussels responded forcefully and sent a clear message: within days, it opened an investigation into WhatsApp's global revenue, amounting to around €120 million, for violating the EU's digital services law. And since then, it has continued to open cases against major US tech companies.

Unlike Sánchez, European leaders have generally avoided engaging in direct rhetorical battles with Musk, and even less so with Trump. However, the EU has always made it clear that, at least until now, one of its limits is giving free rein to tech oligarchs who seek to destroy EU values.