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Big Tech’s New Adversaries in Europe
For the past five years, Big Tech has faced a flurry of new rules and reprimands from Brussels. Now with a new team taking over the European Commission, relations may be entering a new era.
The bombastic commissioner, with his swoop of white hair, became the public face of Brussels’ irritation with American tech giants, touring Silicon Valley last summer to personally remind the industry of looming regulatory deadlines. While Breton was the commissioner for the internal market, Virkkunen will work with the same team but operate under the upgraded title of executive vice president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, meaning she reports directly to von der Leyen. “[Previously], it was very, very clear that the commission was ambitious when it came to thinking about and proposing new legislation to counter all these different threats that they had perceived, especially those posed by big technology platforms,” says Mathias Vermeulen, public policy director at Brussels-based consultancy AWO.
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