BRUSSELS — The United States wants to engage in a meaningful dialogue with Brussels on reducing European tech regulation, its Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder told POLITICO. The U.S. administration and its allies have been vocal critics of the EU’s tech rules, saying they unfairly target American companies and hurt freedom of speech. The European Commission has repeatedly denied such allegations, saying it is merely trying to rein in Big Tech and protect the online space from harmful behavior. In an interview Monday, Puzder said he hoped that this week’s vote in the European Parliament to advance last year’s transatlantic trade deal would set the scene for talks to loosen constraints on business. “I’ve had talks with individuals within the EU about moving this discussion forward. I haven’t, as yet, experienced the concrete steps we need to make that happen,” Puzder said. He was referring to the EU’s tech rulebook — and the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act in particular — that Washington sees as barriers to trade. “Hopefully, we’ll continue to talk. Once this trade agreement is approved, in the spirit of moving forward with these non-tariff trade barriers, we’ll be able to break down some of these walls,” he added.  Discussions are still in their very early stages and “there’s nothing formal,” Puzder clarified. The next steps between Brussels and Washington should be “diplomatic engagement followed by political engagement,” he added.  RECALIBRATION NEGOTIATION The envoy’s comments follow a heated series of exchanges between senior American and European officials over whether the EU’s tech rules should even be part of the transatlantic trade discussion. In November 2025, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick tied a potential easing of U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs to a “recalibration” by the EU of the bloc’s digital regulations. European Commission Executive Vice President Teresa Ribera responded that tying tariff relief to European tech rules amounted to “blackmail.” Ribera, the EU’s top competition official, told POLITICO at the time that the EU would not accept such attempts to strong-arm it on a topic that it considers to be a matter of sovereignty. She is currently visiting the U.S. and is due to meet tech industry bosses in San Francisco this week. Transatlantic ties took another turn for the worse when the Donald Trump administration in December barred former Industry Commissioner Thierry Breton from traveling to the U.S. over his role in creating and implementing the EU’s tech rules.  Puzder explained that Washington doesn’t think “that Europe shouldn’t have regulation,” but that it shouldn’t be “regulating in such an extreme manner that companies feel they can’t innovate — which is why … most of the tech startups in Europe end up moving to Silicon Valley.” European Commission Vice President Teresa Ribera attends a press conference in Brussels on Feb. 25, 2026. | Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images Responding, the European Commission stressed there is “continued engagement” between the EU and the U.S.  “Executive Vice President [Henna] Virkkunen has held several meetings with U.S. Representatives, both in Europe and in the U.S. At technical level, our teams also engage on a continuous basis with their American counterparts,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier said in a statement to POLITICO.  Virkunnen’s remit covers technology policy. Before Trump’s return to the White House, the two sides held held a structured dialogue under the auspices of the now-defunct EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council.  The occasional forum, launched by former U.S. President Joe Biden, sought to establish a structured dialogue around regulatory cooperation. Yet in the view of observers it under-delivered, failing for instance to resolve a long-running steel dispute. The TTC has not met since Trump returned to the White House in early 2025. 

BRUSSELS — Most Europeans believe the U.S. could pull the plug on technology that Europe heavily relies on, according to a new poll. Eighty-six percent of people think a sudden U.S. move to restrict Europe’s access to digital services is “plausible” and “should not be ruled out,” and 59 percent called it “already a real and concrete risk,” in a survey conducted by SWG and Polling Europe presented to European Parliament members this week. European governments are trying to reduce their dependency on U.S. technology for critical services like cloud, communications and AI. One fear driving the shift to use homegrown tech is that of a “kill switch”; the idea that U.S. President Donald Trump could force the hand of American tech providers to cease services in Europe. Those fears peaked when the International Criminal Court’s Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan lost access last year to his Microsoft-hosted email account after the U.S. imposed sanctions on him. “During the last year, everybody has really realized how important it is that we are not dependent on one country or one company when it comes to some very critical technologies,” the EU’s tech chief Henna Virkkunen told an audience in Brussels earlier this year, at an event organized by POLITICO. “In these times … dependencies, they can be weaponized against us,” Virkkunen said. The survey quizzed 5,079 respondents across all 27 EU member countries in January. For 55 percent of those interviewed, charting a “European path” has become a “central strategic issue.” The European Parliament and a series of national government institutions have already taken steps to move away from ubiquitous U.S. tech — though EU capitals have cautioned the transition won’t happen overnight. The European Commission is also finalizing a set of proposals due in late May to reduce reliance on foreign tech, including defining what qualifies as a sovereign provider and which critical sectors should rely exclusively on them to safeguard European data and day-to-day operations. The poll suggests U.S. efforts to debunk and dismiss the “kill switch” scenario haven’t convinced Europeans. U.S. National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross told an audience in Munich in February that the idea that Trump can pull the plug on the internet is not “a credible argument.” Microsoft President Brad Smith said in Brussels last year that the “kill switch” scenario was “exceedingly unlikely” to happen, but acknowledged it’s “a real concern of people across Europe.” He pledged to push back against any prospective orders to suspend operations in Europe. U.S. firms at the same time are rushing to assuage the concerns with safeguards, like air-gapped solutions that would prove resilient in the case of operational disruptions.

Listen on * Spotify * Apple Music * Amazon Music Brussels is adjusting to a shifting geopolitical landscape. Coreper meetings — regular gatherings of EU ambassadors — are becoming more frequent and offer clear evidence of how the bloc is adapting. What was once largely preparatory now plays a central role in shaping negotiations before leaders ever sit down. Then, the energy saga continues. The European Commission, responding to Hungary’s warnings over disruptions to Russian oil flows through Ukraine’s Druzhba pipeline, says there is no immediate supply risk and that alternative routes are available. So is this a genuine squeeze — or a political ploy ahead of elections in Hungary? And finally: The former tech commissioner, Thierry Breton, who faces U.S. sanctions over his role in drafting the Digital Services Act, makes his case before the European Parliament. Lawmakers have largely rallied behind him, framing the dispute as a test of Europe’s digital sovereignty and of the bloc’s complex relationship with Washington. But not everyone agrees — some argue the sanctions were predictable, given Breton’s earlier warnings to U.S. platforms. Plus: a cleansing confession from a Swedish minister. We’d love to hear from you — tell us where and when you listen to the Brussels Playbook Podcast. Send us a note or a voice message on our WhatsApp at: +32 491 05 06 29. **A message from Amazon: Across Europe, businesses are growing with the AWS Cloud to build innovative, scalable products. From Europe’s largest enterprises and government agencies to the continent’s fastest growing startups, learn more about how AWS Cloud is helping businesses across Europe grow at AWS.eu.**

Elisabeth Braw is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the author of the award-winning “Goodbye Globalization” and a regular columnist for POLITICO. Her new book, Undersea War, is out later this year. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney delivered a thoughtful and stirring speech at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos, speaking of “a rupture in the world order, the end of a pleasant fiction and the beginning of a harsh reality, where geopolitics, where the large, main power, geopolitics, is submitted to no limits, no constraints.” Though he didn’t mention the U.S. by name, it was clear Washington’s recent behavior had driven him to this conclusion. The speech didn’t please U.S. President Donald Trump, who went on to call Carney ungrateful and threatened to impose 100-percent tariffs on Canada if it struck a trade deal with China — even though Washington itself has been conducting a series of trade talks with Beijing. Trump appears willing to harm America’s allies in ways that once seemed inconceivable, and threats — as we’ve learned — are his way, with many of them are directed at allies. The threat against Canada, for example, came just days after Trump reminded luminaries at the World Economic Forum in Davos that he was very serious about annexing Greenland. And that was after he’d threatened new U.S. tariffs against European nations voicing support for Denmark. Tariffs for European friends are, of course, already a reality. In late January, the U.S. president told an interviewer he imposed 39 percent tariffs on Switzerland after its president “rubbed me the wrong way.” All of this is why we need to start looking somewhere we haven’t had to before: at the bottom of the ocean, at undersea cables — more specifically, at the U.S. firms owning undersea cables. Google & Co. aren’t just tech giants, they’re now cable giants too. And if the White House were to instruct them to disconnect the nations it wanted to hurt, those countries would find themselves in very serious trouble. The speech didn’t please U.S. President Donald Trump, who went on to call Mark Carney ungrateful and threatened to impose 100-percent tariffs on Canada if it struck a trade deal with China. | Fabrice Coffrini/AFP via Getty Images Back in the 1850s, when undersea telegraph cables were first invented, they were owned by a small number of pioneering private companies. Because the prospect of international telegraph traffic was enormously appealing, a couple of them managed to attract government backing for their more audacious undertakings. Later on, as cable traffic developed and grew, it mostly became the domain of state-owned postal services, since they were also in charge of telegraph services. And when undersea telephone cables arrived in the mid-20th century, they were mostly helmed by government-owned telephone companies. Nowadays, we have several hundred data cables on the seabed because that’s how the Internet travels. For decades, telephone companies around the world teamed up to buy and operate them. More recently, however, tech companies, television providers and a whole host of other companies solely in the business of owning and operating subsea cables have also joined in. Since undersea cables are expensive and — for the most part — connect two or more countries, such international consortia make sense. Unsurprisingly, some of these consortium participants are American. But these days, some of the most powerful cables being installed have only one kind of owner: a U.S. tech giant. Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft already co-own numerous subsea cables with other firms, but now they’re striking out on their own: Google, the leader of the pack, already operates a cable connecting South Carolina with Bermuda and Portugal, and it’s about to add more, including the only cable connecting Florida and Europe. Amazon will be the sole owner of a new cable connecting Ireland and the U.S., and Meta is working on Waterworth — a massive 50,000-kilometer cable circling the globe. These wealthy firms indisputably have the money, and their assumption that AI will further accelerate data use is also beyond argument. The tricky part is the state of the world. Back in the 1850s, when undersea telegraph cables were first invented, they were owned by a small number of pioneering private companies. | The Print Collector/Print Collector/Getty Images Subsea cables functioned swimmingly during the harmonious post-Cold War years because nations were eager to get along and increase prosperity. In the past three years, however, we’ve received regular and dramatic reminders that people, perhaps at the behest of a hostile state, can damage these cables. That’s why we need to worry about the prospect of a new geopolitical risk on the seabed — the risk that a country may decide to harm other nations by exploiting the cables’ ownership. China and the U.S. already lean on their cable owners not to connect any upcoming cables with the respective other country. And while many Western nations have grown wary of close ties with China, Trump’s recent conduct suggests they should be concerned about data-cable dependence on the U.S. as well. U.S. cable owners are in the business of business, not geopolitics. But if the U.S. president, perhaps enraged by the comments of a European leader, were to tell tech giants to block the continent from the cables they own or co-own, would they really defy his instructions? Based on their behavior leading up to Trump’s second inauguration — where the CEOs of Amazon, Meta and Google stood behind him at the ceremony — it’s safe to say the answer is a likely “no.” European banks and officials are already thinking along such lines when it comes to the dominance of U.S. payment cards like Visa. They have, according to the Financial Times, “become increasingly concerned that US payment companies’ power could be weaponised in the event of a serious breakdown in relations.” Indeed, on Feb. 19,  Britain’s banking bosses will meet to discuss a U.K. alternative. It would be privately owned and backed by the government, the Guardian reports. On the seabed, we also need to prepare accordingly. That includes helping European companies form alliances that can compete with the Silicon Valley hegemons-in-waiting.

BRUSSELS — The European Parliament should postpone a vote on legislation implementing the EU’s side of its transatlantic trade deal, after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s global tariffs, a senior lawmaker said Sunday, citing fresh legal uncertainty around the agreement. The “terms of Turnberry Agreement and legal basis on which it was built have changed,” Bernd Lange, chair of European Parliament’s trade committee, said on Sunday. “Do new tariffs based on Section 122 not constitute a breach of the deal? Regardless, no one knows whether the U.S. will adhere to it — or even be able to,” he said in a post on X. “At our extra meeting tomorrow, I will therefore propose to the EP-negotiating team putting legislative work on hold until we have a proper legal assessment and clear commitments from the U.S. side,” Lange said. One day after the Supreme Court struck down his signature tariff policy, Trump on Saturday announced he plans a new global tariff rate of 15 percent, lifting the rate from 10 percent. To do so, he invoked Section 122 of the U.S. Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose tariffs up to 15 percent to address a “large and serious balance-of-payment deficit,” which can remain in effect for no more than 150 days unless the U.S. Congress authorizes an extension. The vote in the European Parliament, scheduled for Tuesday, is meant to confirm the institution’s position on a law that removes tariffs on U.S. industrial goods and lobster — a key plank of EU pledges under a deal struck at Trump’s Turnberry golf resort last summer. The delay proposed by Lange will have to garner support among the EU’s political groups during an extraordinary meeting set for Monday afternoon. The Greens, via their lead lawmaker on the file Anna Cavazzini, said: “The vote on the Turnberry Agreement in the European Parliament should be paused until we have clarity.” “It was clear that Trump’s tariffs were illegal under international law. Now we also have confirmation that they were also illegal under U.S. law,” she said in a statement on Friday.

BRUSSELS — The European Union called for stability in the transatlantic trade relationship after the Supreme Court of the United States struck down President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs in a 6-3 ruling on Friday. “We remain in close contact with the U.S. Administration as we seek clarity on the steps they intend to take in response to this ruling,” European Commission Deputy Chief Spokesperson Olof Gill said in a statement. “Businesses on both sides of the Atlantic depend on stability and predictability in the trading relationship. We therefore continue to advocate for low tariffs and to work towards reducing them,” Gill added. The EU is broadly expecting that the Trump administration will reinstate tariffs through other means, for instance via its Section 232 investigations, which in the past imposed tariffs on European steel and aluminum. “We were indeed monitoring this decision. However, we expect the U.S. administration to use other legal instruments to reinstate its tariffs,” a French diplomat told POLITICO. Giorgio Leali contributed reporting.

NEW DELHI — Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday blasted social media platforms and the tech executives who run them in a fiery dismissal of their claims to be defending free speech. The French president used a discussion on university partnerships between India and France to flay nontransparent platforms and artificial intelligence systems. “Some of them claim to be in favor of free speech. We are in favor of free algorithms, totally transparent,” Macron said during his remarks in India. “Free speech is pure bullshit if nobody knows how you are guided through this.” “All the algorithms have biases, we know that. There is no doubt,” he said. “And they are so impactful, when you speak about social media, that having no clue about how the algorithm is made, how it is tested and where it will guide you — the democratic biases of this could be huge.” Since returning to office in 2025, U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has cast Europe’s tech rules as a threat to America’s free speech tradition. While Brussels has spent the past decade designing legislation to rein in Big Tech through landmark laws like the GDPR, Digital Services Act and Digital Markets Act, Washington frames many of those efforts as incompatible with U.S. principles on free expression. That dispute has triggered a broader political clash, with U.S. officials and tech companies warning that Europe’s content moderation rules amount to censorship, while EU leaders insist the measures are necessary to curb illegal content and platform abuses. Macron has repeatedly called for restrictions on access to social media access for younger users, as a groundswell of European political sentiment builds in support of his position.

Social media platform WhatsApp on Thursday accused Russian authorities of trying to block the service as part of an effort to exert more control over the country’s internet sphere. “The Russian government attempted to fully block WhatsApp in an effort to drive people to a state-owned surveillance app,” WhatsApp said in a statement on X. “Trying to isolate over 100 million users from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” the Meta-owned company said. The move against WhatsApp follows reports of renewed difficulties with Telegram, the most popular messaging platform in Russia, after media watchdog Roskomnadzor announced new restrictions against the company earlier this week. Roskomnadzor last year accused Telegram and WhatsApp of violating Russian law by facilitating terrorists and scammers.  Following its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia banned as “extremist” Facebook and Instagram, which also are owned by Meta. In a post earlier this week, Telegram founder Pavel Durov accused the Russian authorities of trying to “force its citizens to switch to a state-controlled app built for surveillance and political censorship.” The Kremlin has promoted the home-grown messenger service Max as an alternative to foreign platforms. But internet experts have criticized the Russian app for providing a backdoor to Moscow’s security services in what they see as an attempt by the Kremlin to secure further control over Russians’ private lives. Asked whether WhatsApp would be allowed to remain in Russia, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday said it depended on whether Meta “would enter into dialogue with the Russian authorities.”  “If the corporation sticks to an uncompromising position and, I would say, shows itself unready to align with Russian legislation, then there is no chance,” Peskov told state news agency TASS.

Frank H. McCourt Jr. is an American business executive and civic entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Project Liberty, a global initiative aiming to restore agency in the digital age by giving people ownership and control of their personal data. At the height of the Cold War, a man named Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin convened the West’s leading security experts in Munich. As a World War II resistance fighter and member of the Stauffenberg circle, which had attempted to overthrow Hitler, his goal was simple: preventing World War III. And he dedicated the rest of his life to fostering open dialogue, sharing defense strategies and deescalating tensions. Tomorrow, as global leaders gather at the annual Munich Security Conference once again, the threats they face are no less profound than they were some 60 years ago — though many of them are far less visible. Yes, wars are raging across continents, alliances are being tested, and tensions are escalating across borders and oceans. However, I would wager that if von Kleist-Schmenzin were alive today, he would agree that the most consequential struggle of our time may not be unfolding on traditional battlefields at all. Instead, it’s unfolding in the digital realm, where control over personal data — over our digital personhood — is the central source of power and influence in the modern world. When the World Wide Web was born, we were promised an era of democratic participation — a digital town square for a new millennium. What we have instead is something far darker: Predatory algorithms shredding civil society, warping truth and pitting neighbor against neighbor, while a handful of the world’s richest companies know more about us than any intelligence agency ever could. Deep down, we all feel the absolute grip of the Internet on society. We feel it at the national level, as polarization and misinformation continue to fray our social fabric, upend elections and disrupt the world order. We feel it at our kitchen tables, as artificial intelligence bots and polarizing voices prey on the mental and social health of our children. This crisis is no accident. It’s the world Big Tech has deliberately built. From the moment Facebook introduced the “like” button, the Internet began its descent from a boundless repository of knowledge into a system optimized for rage, addiction and profit—one that rewards division and disregards truth. The business model is quite straightforward: Algorithms are engineered to capture our attention and exploit it, rather than inform or connect us. And by the metric of stock price, this model has been wildly successful. Big Tech companies have amassed trillions of dollars in record time. And they’ve done so by accumulating the most valuable resource in human history — our personal data. Acquiring it through a surveillance apparatus that would make the Stasi blush. Now, with the rise of AI, these same companies are selling us a new story — that of a brave new chapter for the Internet that is exponentially more powerful and ostensibly benevolent. Yet, the underlying logic remains the same. These systems are still designed to extract more data, exert more control, deepen manipulation, all at an even more unprecedented scale. The threat has particularly escalated with the emergence of the “agentic web,” where autonomous AI systems are no longer confined to interpreting information but are empowered to act on it – often with minimal oversight and inadequate alignment safeguards. OpenClaw — an open-source autonomous AI assistant — reflects this rapid shift from consumption to delegation perfectly: Individuals are handing over sweeping permissions, enabling agents to interact and operate freely with other agents in real time, dramatically amplifying exposure to real-world harm, coordinated manipulation from bad actors and with even less human control. And yet, those who raise concerns about this concentration of power and these security risks are quickly dismissed as anti-progress, or accused of ceding the future of AI to China. If Ewald-Heinrich von Kleist-Schmenzin were alive today, he would agree that the most consequential struggle of our time may not be unfolding on traditional battlefields at all. | Rainer Jensen/DPA/AFP via Getty Images Let’s be clear: We won’t beat China by becoming China. Autocratic algorithms, centralized power and mass surveillance are fundamentally incompatible with democracy. And were von Kleist-Schmenzin to look at today’s AI frameworks, he’d likely recognize them as far closer to the east of the Berlin Wall than the west. To reverse that reality, we must build alternative systems that respect individual rights, return ownership and control of personal data to individuals, and align with democratic principles. The technologies shaping our lives need to be optimized to protect citizens, not endanger them. Here’s the good news: This technology is already being built. Around the world, leading technologists, universities, companies and governments are working to establish a new paradigm for AI — open-source, transparent systems governed by the public sector and civil society. My organization, Project Liberty, is part of this effort, grounded in a simple belief: We can, and must, build AI technology that’s in harmony with fundamental democratic values. Such upgraded AI architecture is designed for human flourishing. It will give people a voice in how these platforms operate, real choices over how their data is used, and a stake in the economic value they create online. It will be paired with policy and governance frameworks that safeguard democracy, freedom and trust. As the world’s leaders gather in Munich, I call on them to help build a better foundation for AI that embeds Western values and protects future generations. Let them consider the world von Kleist-Schmenzin sought to save, and join us on the front lines of democracy’s new battleground.

BRUSSELS — Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson is looking forward to meeting his fellow leaders at a castle in the Belgian countryside on Thursday but not even these relaxed surroundings can quell the EU’s simmering divisions. The chief agitator this time is French President Emmanuel Macron, who is pushing for a new “Buy European” drive — which would seek to favor the EU’s own companies in areas of strategic importance such as defense, steel and electric vehicles. Macron has triggered concern among some of his counterparts, including Kristersson, who leads a proudly free-trading nation and is deeply suspicious of states intervening in markets.  “Well, him and I, we quite often friendly-argue with each other on these matters,” Kristersson said of his relations with Macron, during an interview with POLITICO. “I don’t always agree with the methods.” The European Commission is expected soon to unveil proposals for how a “European preference” could operate to help boost the bloc’s production in strategic industries. Macron appeared increasingly isolated this week, with Germany knocking back his proposal for more joint EU debt to fund strategic investments, and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen warning of “a fine line to walk” on the concept of a “European preference.” Even so, the crisis in transatlantic relations — inflamed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s threats to impose tariffs on allies in his quest to acquire Greenland — has made it more urgent for EU leaders to strengthen the bloc’s economic might, Kristersson said.  Macron has a point that Europe must be more “self-reliant,” Kristersson said, but trying to protect European supply chains and businesses from international competition will not necessarily help the competitiveness of the EU economy.  “I think European preference, if that means having [such] extremely good companies, products, services in Europe that they are unavoidable for the rest of the world, then I’m very much in favor of it,” Kristersson said. “If it means protecting European companies, for European purchase or European procurement, which makes them avoid competition from other parts of the world, I am not at all sure that’s a good idea.” He called for European leaders to improve the conditions for companies to thrive: better infrastructure, education, research and new trade agreements with countries outside the bloc.  Kristersson gave the example of audio streaming platform Spotify, which is headquartered in Stockholm, as a rare European success in an otherwise sparse landscape for tech giants. Spotify, he said, is Europe’s “one big tech company” right now. “Otherwise most of the companies have turned to the U.S.”  A more open approach to promoting European businesses should embrace British and Norwegian firms, he said, arguing that exposing companies to competition from Korea or China or the U.S. actually helps make them more competitive.  “There is always a risk of protecting companies that basically are not that competitive as their competitors would be, or a race for closeness,” he said “I mean, if the world goes in a direction where we try to trade only with neighbors, I think that would be a bad idea.”  Kristersson said he hoped the EU’s 27 leaders would use the current “crisis” in relations with the U.S. to inject “a sense of urgency” into the discussion and agree to concrete action on improving the bloc’s capacity to defend itself and boost its businesses.  “There is always, obviously, the risk of the opposite,” he said. “Every crisis consumes all the oxygen in the room, so that sometimes we are better on crisis management than on systemic, long-term reform.”