Tech leaders in Europe are calling on countries in the bloc to prepare for Donald Trump’s return to the White House by taking stronger action against big tech companies based in the US.
The businessman-turned-politician’s electoral victory was a key topic at the recently held Web Summit conference in Portugal’s Lisbon, according to a report by CNBC.
A few prominent European tech figures suggested countering Trump’s American protectionism by adopting a ‘European-first’ approach to critical technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
“It’s time for Europe to step up […] It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And the time is now, because we now have a leader in the U.S. that is ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders should be ‘Europe-first,’” Andy Yen, the CEO of VPN provider Proton, was quoted as saying on the sidelines of the tech conference.
Thomas Plantenga, the head of online shopping app Vinted, emphasised the need for Europe to “fend for ourselves” in order to not get “left behind”.
“We need [to] ensure that we can take care of our own safety, that we can take care of our own energy, that we ensure to keep on investing in our education and innovation so that we can keep up with the rest [of the world],” he said.
CEOs fear EU may ease up on Big Tech
With Trump set to come into power, tech executives are also concerned that the European Union (EU) might change its regulatory tack and go soft on US-based tech giants for fear of retaliation.
“Europe has been thinking in a very globalist mindset. They’re thinking we need to be fair to everybody, we need to open our market to everybody, we need to play fair, because we believe in fairness. Well, guess what? The Americans and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They have been playing extremely unfairly for the last 20 years. And now they have a president that is extremely ‘America-first,’” Proton’s Yen reportedly said.
Mitchell Baker, former Mozilla Foundation CEO, highlighted the EU’s Digital Markets Act as resulting in meaningful changes for the Firefox web browser.
“The change in Firefox new users and market share on Android is noticeable […] That’s nice for us — but it’s also an indicator of how much power and centralized distribution that these companies have,” Baker said.
Faced with fines and regulatory pressure, Google opened up its “choice screen” on Android phones so that users would have the choice to pick the default search engine.
Uncertainty over AI and regulation
The impact of Trump’s re-election on the global AI regulatory landscape is still unclear.
“We will learn in the next few months what President-elect Trump will say, and in January we will start seeing some of what President Trump does in this area,” Shelley McKinley, chief legal officer of code repository platform GitHub, was quoted as saying.
“I do think it is important that we all, as society, as businesses, as people, continue to think about the different scenarios,” she added.
The EU’s AI Act is likely to have a major impact on US tech firms as the landmark legislation establishes new transparency requirements and restrictions on companies developing as well as using AI models.
Meanwhile, European tech companies are urging the region’s governments to help build localised computing infrastructure required for AI services in line with regional languages and values.