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A top EU official denied taking a softer approach to Big Tech, citing a “very clear legal basis” for regulators and pointing to several ongoing investigations into the social media platform. X and Meta.
The FT reported Earlier this week, the EU was reassessing the investigations Apple, Google and Meta – a process that could ultimately lead to the European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, scaling back or changing the focus of its probes.
However, speaking to CNBC on Thursday, Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for technological sovereignty, pushed back.
“We have our Digital Services Law that came into force a little more than a year ago, and there are many formal proceedings against, we can say, all the big platforms: Meta platforms, Instagram, Facebook, also in X and with TikTok,” said Virkkunen.
“We continue the work, so there is no new decision made. So we do the investigations [to see] if they respect our rules,” he said.
U Digital Services Act o DSA, which entered into full effect in 2024, gives the EU institutions the power to regulate Big Tech in an attempt to prevent illegal and harmful activities online, and clamp down on disinformation.
Despite these new powers, however, there are growing questions about how the EU will implement the rules, especially after the return of President-elect Donald Trump to the White House.
“It remains to be seen what the EU will do, as some investigations have gone further than others, but it is also clear that US tech companies will try to use the Trump administration to roll back EU rules “, Dexter Thillien, Principal Analyst. at the Economist Intelligence Unit, he told CNBC.
It comes as technological industry attempts to cozy to Trump before his second term as president. Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg attend Trump’s inauguration next week, according to NBC news.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week, meanwhile, asked the incoming president of the United States to look at the EU’s approach to Big Tech, saying that the way the bloc applies competition rules is “almost like a fee.”
EU official Virkkunen is one of a new team of politicians who started their work as members of the EU’s executive arm in December. Until now, the block has been considered as a technological regulation leader and has opened the door to many probes into the behavior of Big Tech companies.
When asked if he plans to take a softer approach to the sector, Virkkunen said: “We [have a] a very clear legal basis and regulatory rules in Europe, and of course, now we fully apply these rules.”
Virkkunen did not say whether he felt pressure as a result of Trump’s return to the White House. Instead, he said, “all companies, American, European or Chinese, must comply with EU regulations.”
X’s investigation
In December 2023, Musk’s X era hit with the first EU probe under the digital services act. The European Commission is evaluate whether X violated the obligations of transparency and its duties to counter illegal content.
At the time, the institution said it was specifically evaluating areas related to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.
As Musk continues court the extreme right before the elections in Germany – including hosting a live discussion with the leader of the AfD party Alice Weidel – there are questions about whether the European Commission will evaluate this conversation as part of the investigation.
“This isn’t about Elon Musk. It’s about X,” Virkkunen said.
“X is [a] very large online platform, they have to take their responsibilities, and they have to assess and mitigate the risks, for example, what they have placed for the electoral processes and for the civic discourse. Ma [the European] Commission is already investigating X on this, and the scope of the investigation is already quite large,” he said, adding that “we are all the time monitoring” in case of new developments.
