European commissioner for tech Henna Virkkunen is not too keen on you knowing what Meta, Google and other big US online firms have been saying to her.
A year-long fight to press the EU’s powerful executive arm to cough up correspondence between Virkkunen and tech giants says a lot about the way commission president Ursula von der Leyen has tightened up the control of information.
The union’s digital regulations have become a real point of tension in the fraying relationship between Europe and the United States. Virkkunen, who oversees the bloc’s digital rules, has had to contend with serious political pushback from tech firms and the Trump administration.
These days any EU decision to fine Big Tech companies for failing to clamp down on the deluge of illegal and harmful content on screens, or for abusing their dominant market positions, is carefully weighed up. Trump has warned penalties on US companies could be met by hefty tariffs on European trade in retaliation.
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Senior commission officials working under Virkkunen initially resisted releasing correspondence between top executives of Facebook-owner Meta, Amazon and Google and the Finnish politician, in response to a standard access-to-information request from The Irish Times.
In something of a pyrrhic victory, an appeal saw the commission finally release copies of the letters, a year after the request was first lodged.
Nick Clegg, then-Meta’s top lobbyist, told the EU commissioner he saw a “growing disconnect” between European leaders’ hopes for artificial intelligence to boost their economies, and regulators’ slow approach to the technology.
“While other regions are moving forward with AI development, the EU’s regulatory delays have resulted in Europeans accessing AI technology much later than others,” the former UK deputy prime minister wrote in a December 20th, 2024 email to Virkkunen.
Kent Walker, head of global affairs at Google, assured the tech commissioner that the online giant remained “deeply committed” to Europe. He noted Google had invested more than €4.5 billion in a large data centre in Hamina, in her home country of Finland.
The Google executive said he was eager to chat to Virkkunen about the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, and how the landmark pieces of tech legislation were working.
A letter on behalf of Amazon chief executive Andy Jassy said the tech giant hoped to “contribute to enhancing the EU’s competitiveness and AI development”. The December 11th, 2024 letter said Amazon was “deeply committed to Europe”.
It is unusual the commission would attempt to halt the release of such standard correspondence between industry and a commissioner.
Roberto Viola, the top civil servant in the commissioner’s department, claimed the documents contained information about tech companies’ positions and views. Releasing the lobbying letters could “undermine their commercial interests”, the official wrote in his original May 6th decision.
Journalists who have spent years covering the EU institutions complain the commission is increasingly reluctant to part with information about goings on inside its Berlaymont headquarters.
Von der Leyen has centralised a lot of decision-making power within her team of advisers and exercises a greater element of control over the public pronouncements of the other 26 commissioners.
A commission spokesman said it upheld the highest standards of governance and transparency. The EU body received about 700 access requests for records each year, with documents released in nearly 80 per cent of cases.
The EU’s relations with US tech multinationals has taken on a particular political sensitivity since the start of Donald Trump’s second term.
The Big Tech bros, feeling confident the full weight of the White House is behind them, have become more aggressive in pushing back.
X owner Elon Musk, Apple and Meta owner Mark Zuckerberg have turned up the pressure on Brussels to roll back its digital regulations. The companies rankle at fines for failing to comply with the bloc’s online guardrails, but they really take issue with EU rulings that direct changes to how they can operate.
The US state department fired a shot across regulators’ bows late last year. Washington took the unprecedented step of issuing a travel ban to former commissioner Thierry Breton, the previous enforcer of EU tech rules. Virkkunen is probably conscious she could quickly find herself in the crosshairs of the Trump administration.
[ EU readies tougher tech enforcement in 2026 as Trump warns of retaliationOpens in new window ]
While tech lobbyists have been turning the screw on the commission in Brussels, they have separately been trying to tap an old backchannel that runs through Dublin, which became a well-established route for US multinationals to influence EU policy debates in the years after the financial crash.
Meta, whose European headquarters is based in Dublin, has been pressing the Irish Government to make the case for EU tech regulations and data protection rules to be diluted.
It’s fair to say it would not be a good look for a government to be seen repeating the talking points of US tech in Brussels right now.
