Eye on AI | Fortune CEO Daily: Europe's Big Tech Offensive

Good morning. David Meyer here in Berlin, filling in for Alan.

The European Union has long been a tough regulator in the tech sphere—far ahead of the game on the digital privacy front, and happy to fine the likes of Google billions of euros for its antitrust violations where U.S. regulators are only now starting to get serious about online competition. (See today’s news about the FTC’s advancing Amazon probe for the latest example.)

But the American tech industry can now expect to get an even rougher ride in Europe, judging by the shape of the new European Commission, as unveiled yesterday by incoming Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

VDL, as she is known in Brussels, has vastly expanded the powers of the much-feared competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager. The liberal Dane retains her competition portfolio, but is now also one of VDL’s three top deputies, with responsibility for creating “a Europe fit for the digital age.”

That means she will now be both the bloc’s top antitrust enforcer and, as VDL’s mission letter to Vestager makes clear, the co-author of its industrial policy. Big data, digital taxation, new rules for online content and artificial intelligence (with the aid of France’s new commissioner, Sylvie Goulard)—all these things will now be under Vestager’s purview, alongside the enforcement of monopoly rules.

The U.S. tech sector certainly has much to fear. However, VDL’s digital proposals are not all about holding back American titans; they are more overtly about building up a European tech sector that can ably compete on the global stage. The new president supports a “one in, one out” principle whereby the introduction of each new legal burden on companies means the scrapping of an older burden. In theory, that should benefit players from around the world, not just Europe.

Of course, a new Commission’s aims will not necessarily translate into reality. Industrial policy does not always have the desired effect. But Vestager has already shown herself to be a creative enforcer—witness the way she used antitrust law to force Ireland to claim $15 billion in back taxes from Apple. If anyone is imaginative enough to fix the mismatch between the velocity of technological development and the relatively glacial pace of lawmaking, it’s her.

So Silicon Valley should probably brace for enhanced pushback from Europe, in terms of both enforcement and—if all goes to plan—more credible competition.

More news below.

David Meyer
david.meyer@fortune.com
@superglaze

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This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer. Find previous editions here, and sign up for other Fortune newsletters here.