A leading EU official has denied taking a softer approach to Big Tech, citing a “very clear legal basis” for regulators and pointing to several ongoing investigations into the likes of social media platform X and Meta.
The FT reported earlier this week that the EU was reassessing investigations into 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 their probes.
However, speaking to CNBC on Thursday, Henna Virkkunen, the European Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, pushed back.
“We have our Digital Service Act that came into force a little bit more than one year ago, and there is several formal proceedings going on against, we can say, all the big platforms: Meta platforms, Instagram, Facebook, also on X and with TikTok,” Virkkunen said.
“We are continuing the work, so there is not any new decisions made. So we are doing the investigations [to see] if they are complying with our rules,” she said.
The Digital Services Act or DSA, which came into full effect in 2024, gives EU institutions the power to regulate Big Tech in a bid 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 is actually going to enforce the rules, particularly in the aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump’s return 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 U.S. tech companies will try to use the Trump administration to push back on EU rules,” Dexter Thillien, lead analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC.
It comes as the tech industry attempts to cozy up to Trump ahead of his second term as president. Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos and Zuckerberg will attend Trump’s inauguration next week, according to NBC news.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg last week, meanwhile, called on the incoming U.S. president to look at the EU’s approach to Big Tech, saying the way the bloc applies competition rules is “almost like a tariff.”
EU official Virkkunen is one of a new team of politicians that began their work as members of the EU’s executive arm in December. Until now, the bloc has been considered a leader of tech regulation and has opened the door to several probes into the behavior of Big Tech companies.
When asked if she was considering taking a softer approach to the sector, Virkkunen said: “We [have a] very clear legal basis and regulation rules in Europe, and of course, now we are fully enforcing those rules.”
Virkkunen did not say whether she was feeling pressure as a result of Trump’s return to the White House. Instead, she said, “all companies, whether American, European or Chinese, have to respect the EU’s regulations.”
Investigating X
In December 2023, Musk’s X was hit with the EU’s first probe under the Digital Services Act. The European Commission is assessing whether X breached transparency obligations and its duties to counter illegal content.
At the time, the institution said it was specifically assessing areas linked to risk management, content moderation, dark patterns, advertising transparency and data access for researchers.
As Musk continues to court the far-right ahead of an election in Germany — including hosting a live discussion with AfD party leader Alice Weidel — there are questions about whether the European Commission will assess this conversation as part of the investigation.
“This is not 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 are posting for the electoral processes and for civic discourse. But [the European] commission is already investigating X on this, and the scope of investigation is already quite large,” she said, adding that “we are all the time monitoring” in case of new developments.
