A handful of giant Chinese and U.S. tech firms dominate Europe’s digital infrastructure, platforms, and media. This undermines the EU’s ability to safeguard children, protect elections and national security, and support business growth. These problems will be exacerbated by extreme political volatility in Washington.
Europe faces four major digital problems: competitiveness and digital sovereignty; harm to future generations; foreign interference; and threats to democracy. The publication summarises the major challenges and the tools to solve them. Then, it proposes a ‘whole-of-Commission’ mechanism to coherently deploy those tools.
President von der Leyen needs a unifying mechanism that marshals Europe’s diverse powers to create space in the market for Europe’s SMEs and startups, to reduce market fragmentation, and to enable innovation and growth. The paper proposes how to do this.
Early in the new mandate, the Commission should establish a Taskforce. The Taskforce does not manage joint cases. Rather, it enables early interservice coordination, and the coordinated pursuit of objectives set by the political leadership, giving the commission a powerful lever to achieve its strategic objectives. The Taskforce should not deprive any DG of currently held powers and competences. Rather, it should enable early interservice consultation and the coordinated pursuit of objectives set by the political leadership.
This unified enforcement structure will reduce fragmentation in the Single Market. It will also allow the multiple legal instruments to be deployed coherently against a single target firm. This will reduce opportunities for malicious compliance and vexatious appeals, and increase the odds of rapid settlement and remedy. Political leadership of the Taskforce also gives the Commission a powerful tool to exert pressure on the giant US and Chinese companies for its strategic objectives.
