{"id":1450340,"date":"2025-11-03T14:13:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&p=1450340"},"modified":"2025-11-03T14:13:30","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:13:30","slug":"europe-must-confront-donald-trump-or-lose-its-identity","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/europe-must-confront-donald-trump-or-lose-its-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe Must Confront Donald Trump \u2013 or Lose Its Identity"},"featured_media":1450341,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[469],"subjects":[419],"class_list":["post-1450340","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-global-affairs","subjects-global-affairs"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["Europe faces growing pressure from U.S. tech and politics, but its strength lies in upholding democratic values through rights-based regulation and autonomy, writes Reed Van Schenck."],"wpcf-article-body":["\"What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.\" If you have ever visited the \u201cEntertainment Capital of the World,\u201d you\u2019ve likely uttered this quote after a night of revelry \u2013 and the next morning, you probably remembered that hangovers are not cured by thoughts.\r\n\r\nLike hangovers, geopolitical tension cannot be soothed with words alone. And unfortunately, as the European Policy Centre\u2019s Paul Taylor notes<\/a>, \u201cWhat happens in America does not stay in America.\u201d\r\n\r\nThe second administration of Donald Trump is both a product and engine of democratic backsliding. In political science, democratic backsliding refers to the undermining of institutions and practices that ensure that everybody is held to the same rules. When nations undergo democratic backsliding, they do not magically convert into dictatorships overnight. Instead, regimes slowly restrict citizens\u2019 influence by flouting traditional checks and balances. It\u2019s a process, not an event, one that political scientists qualify by measuring the fairness of elections, public trust in institutions, the extent and robustness of public participation in the democratic process, and inequality. Each of these measures, which safeguard democracy from the daily news to the ballot box, are on the decline in the United States.\r\n\r\nThe United States is hardly alone in its democratic backsliding. The V-Dem Institute reports<\/a> that, since 2010, more regimes have undergone backsliding than democratization. In other words, more nations are becoming dictatorial than democratic. Some<\/a> have compared the trend to the previous \u201cwaves\u201d that preceded World War II and the height of the Cold War.\r\n\r\nDemocratic backsliding is a complicated process, so we cannot blame it on any one factor alone. Nevertheless, digital platforms play an outsized role in each measure because they have made it easier for bad actors to spread misinformation and undermine trust in democratic institutions. In the United States, coordinated misinformation campaigns contributed to a conspiracy theory that Joe Biden stole the election in 2020, inspiring thousands of Americans to storm the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. Runaway data collection enables politicians to target specific demographics with advertisements, a feature exploited by Cambridge Analytica on behalf of the far-right in the United Kingdom to swing the Brexit referendum. The same data economies also make it easier for autocracies to interfere in democratic elections, a weapon recently wielded by Russia<\/a> during elections in Moldova, Georgia, and Romania.\r\n\r\nThe Trump administration is determined to spread the wave of democratic backsliding to Europe. This ambition is clearly set forth in efforts to subvert the European Union\u2019s tech regulations. Earlier this year, Apple and Meta (the U.S. firm that owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and other platforms) came under investigation for suspected violations of the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA). Facebook\u2019s \u201cpay or consent\u201d model, which forces users to pay a fee or consent to data tracking, is a clear-cut violation<\/a> of the DMA\u2019s antitrust rules. In response, Trump took to Truth Social to threaten additional tariffs, just a few weeks after closing a trade deal in which the EU acceded to a 15% tariff on European goods and increased European investments in U.S. energy and weapons.\r\n\r\nFortunately, Brussels has resisted<\/a> Trump\u2019s attempt to bully the EU into submission, with European Commission spokesperson Paula Pinho asserting that the EU will retain its \u201csovereign right\u201d to regulate platforms\u2019 economic activities.\r\n
The MAGA machine is determined to enforce the American style of tech regulation upon Europe.<\/blockquote>\r\nHowever, the European Union does not always act so quickly to stand behind its values. Since Elon Musk\u2019s purchase of Twitter, the EU has investigated the platform<\/a> for various violations of the DSA, including the spread of violent content, refusal to provide data to researchers, and non-transparency around advertising. In 2024, investigators found violations on all counts. The European Commission reached out to X to share its results and urge the platform to remedy its problems, which it has not done<\/a>, per Musk\u2019s admission. Despite continued non-compliance, the EU has yet to impose a fine on X, despite rumors circulating since April 2025.\r\n\r\nWhy has the Commission taken a cautious approach? Unlike Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Apple CEO Tim Cook, X CEO Elon Musk can leverage his enormous public profile as a \u201cdefender of free speech.\u201d What\u2019s more, Musk has been a close Trump ally, having served in the administration\u2019s cost-cutting \u201cDepartment of Government Efficiency.\u201d As tech columnist Eliza Gkritsi has suggested<\/a>, the X case could snowball from a legal controversy into a political one, emboldening reaction against the EU\u2019s regulatory regime on both sides of the Atlantic.\r\n\r\nThe enforcement of the DSA promises to remain a sticking point in EU-US relations. In a February 2025 memorandum<\/a>, Trump promised that the DMA and DSA \u201cwill face Scrutiny\u201d as the \u201cAdministration will consider responsive actions like tariffs to combat the digital service taxes\u2026 that foreign governments levy on American companies.\u201d In other words, the more that the EU exercises its right to enforce the DMA and DSA on the European activities of U.S. tech companies, the more likely Trump will up the ante on tariffs, weapons spending, support for Ukraine, and other key issues.\r\n\r\nIn his speech<\/a> to the Munich Security Conference in February 2025, U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance mocked this grave situation. He joked, \u201cIf American democracy can survive ten years of Greta Thunberg\u2019s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.\u201d This argument is not just glib; it is a false equivalency. Whereas Greta Thunberg is merely one private citizen expressing her opinion, Elon Musk is the richest man in the world who purchased a digital platform, gutted its Trust & Safety team, and infused it with an AI chatbot that outputs content glorifying Adolf Hitler<\/a>. More recently, Musk used the platform to amplify misinformation<\/a> in support of Germany\u2019s far-right AfD party, flexing his capacity to interfere in European democratic elections. While Thunberg has no power to enforce her private opinions on the American people, the MAGA machine is determined to enforce the American style of tech regulation upon Europe, despite Thierry Breton\u2019s bold 2022 rejoinder<\/a>: \u201cIn Europe, the bird will fly by our rules.\u201d\r\n\r\nJ.D. Vance makes light of this situation because he, and the political movement that he represents, does not respect the fact that Europe has chosen a different path than the United States when it comes to regulating tech. In her book Digital Empires<\/em><\/a>, legal expert Anu Bradford contrasts three different global approaches to regulating technology: The American \u201cmarket-driven model,\u201d the Chinese \u201cstate-driven model,\u201d and the European \u201crights-driven model.\u201d The European model is unique in that it emphasizes the collective rights of European citizens and deeply involves civil society organizations, not just governments and corporations, in the regulatory process.\r\n\r\nAmerican critics of the EU cannot tell the difference between the European and Chinese models because, in American politics, human rights are conceived in strictly individual terms. When American politicians consider how platforms affect freedom of speech, they are mainly concerned with ensuring that each individual faces no consequences for what they post online. Any efforts by governments to foster a healthy information ecosystem, to safeguard data privacy, or to promote nondiscrimination and solidarity registers to the market-driven mind as a form of democratic backsliding.\r\n\r\nIn contrast, European conceptions of free speech are concerned with balancing individual expression with the collective responsibility to foster a healthy environment marked by equal access to reliable information. Perhaps Europe\u2019s long memory of democratic backsliding equips it with the political will to think in collective terms. As the great philosopher J\u00fcrgen Habermas suggests in The<\/em> Crisis of the European Union<\/em>, \u201cWithin the vast territories of our nation states, the floating horizon of a shared political life-world \u2026 always had to be produced and maintained by mass media.\u201d In other words, the very idea of European political identity depends on fostering a media ecosystem which balances individual and collective rights \u2013 a media ecosystem which Trump and his allies want to destroy.\r\n\r\nEuropean tech regulations are not perfect. Anyone who has clicked through a few GDPR-compliant privacy consent boxes can attest to that. On a more serious point, critics argue that the EU\u2019s regulatory regime undercuts innovation. Nevertheless, European tech regulations reflect Europe\u2019s unique political sensibility: a sense of collective responsibility that is not reducible to either the individual or the state. Accordingly, the Eurobarometer reports<\/a> that European public opinion is strongly in favor of the EU\u2019s rights-driven regulations. Respecting democracy means upholding Europe\u2019s regulatory model, a reflection of Europe\u2019s identity as a force for progress that leaves no one behind.\r\n\r\nDespite himself, Vance accidentally showed MAGA\u2019s hand. Like Musk using his wealth to subvert Twitter, the United States is attempting to leverage its coffers, weapons, tariffs, and far-right European allies to subvert the EU\u2019s rights-based regulatory regime. The only question is whether, like Twitter\u2019s shareholders, the European Union will let itself be bullied into betraying its citizens\u2019 choices, values, and identity.\r\n\r\nA bold response will certainly include enforcement of the DSA and DMA, but must go further. European institutions must de-risk from the United States, build their own clean tech, and foster alliances with like-minded democracies. And it must act before, not after, another crisis ensues. After all, cutting a deal with Trump is like betting against the house in Las Vegas: The only winning move is not to play.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights."],"wpcf-audio-article":["https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/PlayAI_Europe_Must_Confront_Donald_Trump_or.mp3"],"wpcf-article-extract":["Europe faces growing pressure from U.S. tech and politics, but its strength lies in upholding democratic values through rights-based regulation and autonomy, writes Reed Van Schenck."],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/1450340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1450341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1450340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=1450340"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=1450340"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=1450340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}