The EU has let US tech giants run riot. Diluting our data law will only entrench their power | Johnny Ryan and Georg Riekeles

"Europe is hurtling toward digital vassalage. Under Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, EU laws to tackle tech giants have been either not applied or delayed, for fear of offending Donald Trump. Now leaked documents reveal that the European Commission plans to gut a central part of Europe's digital rulebook. This will hurt Europe's innovators and hand the future of Europe's tech sovereignty to US firms."

"Once Europe's most hyped law, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is now on the chopping block. Powerful forces within the European Commission, supported by the German government, hope that deregulation will boost Europe's tech sector, particularly AI. This is a grave mistake. China's DeepSeek, which has stunned the AI world over the past year, emerged under a legal regime far stricter than Europe's. China's rigorous pre-deployment rules appear to have done its world-beating AI innovation no harm."

"Documents revealed in a US court show a vast free-for-all of data inside Meta: it uses information that people give it for one service, such as social media, to prop up unrelated parts of its business, including its most invasive ad targeting. This allows Meta, and other similar companies, to build cascading monopolies that dominate sector after sector. Meta's data free-for-all violates GDPR's commonsense purpose limitation principle: when you hand over data for one purpose, it cannot automatically be used for some other unrelated purpose."

European regulators plan to gut key parts of the GDPR, prioritizing deregulation to boost the tech sector and AI. Weak enforcement of existing EU digital laws has allowed US firms to entrench dominance across multiple markets. Meta's internal practices show cross-use of user data across services, violating the GDPR's purpose limitation and enabling cascading monopolies. China's DeepSeek succeeded under stricter pre-deployment rules, suggesting heavy rules do not preclude AI innovation. Enforcing GDPR principles, especially purpose limitation, would significantly constrain major US tech firms' current business models and could open space for European innovators.

Read at www.theguardian.com