Just as Washington chooses to target Thierry Breton, Europe is opening regulatory pipelines that could become far more inconvenient for American Big Tech than the former French commissioner’s tweets and letters. The US action therefore risks becoming a resounding political own goal, as well as appearing as a belated and poorly calibrated gesture compared to the real centers of regulatory power in Brussels.

As is well known, the United States has decided to deny Breton a visa, presenting him as the architect of alleged “censorship” of social media via the Digital Services Act (DSA) and, more generally, as the symbol of Europe’s regulatory crackdown on US platforms.

However, this measure comes as Breton has been out of commissionership since September 2024, after resigning in disagreement with President Ursula von der Leyen, a figure who, moreover, is certainly not a dovish figure on digital issues. Thus, a former decision-maker is being targeted, who today no longer has formal power over the main regulatory levers, while the President of the Commission and the competent commissioners, Virkkunen and Ribera, who manage the day-to-day implementation of the DSA and DMA, remain at the center of the system.

Breton: the architect punished too late

There is no doubt that Breton was the political-industrial mastermind of the 2019-2024 digital regulatory season in the EU: from the development of the DSA and DMA, and then the AI ​​Act and the Data Act, to the attempt – never realized – to introduce a “fair share” mechanism on the contributions of large platforms to telecommunications networks. However, the concrete implementation of the DSA and DMA – investigations, decisions, sanctions – is now in the hands of a new European Commission, other commissioners, and the competent technical services, as well as the national authorities involved in enforcement. Punishing Breton today means striking at the symbol of an era, not the true regulatory cruxes of the current era. It’s a political signal to the EU, but hardly an effective tool to soften or direct regulatory development and enforcement.

The Digital Omnibus: from easing to tightening?

As the visa scandal erupts, Brussels is discussing a horizontal digital framework “maintenance” measure – the Digital Omnibus – also designed to simplify, streamline, and partially alleviate some of the burdens resulting from the accumulation of regulations (DSA, DMA, Data Act, AI Act, and so on). In theory, this move was expected to face considerable criticism from Washington and US companies, who see the overlapping European obligations as a threat to innovation and the competitiveness of their platforms on the EU internal market. But after the Breton sanction, the political risk is now clear: a fine-tuning process, which could have favored a more pragmatic rebalancing, could instead translate into regulatory tightening. Faced with what is perceived as punitive American interference, drafters and policymakers in Parliament and the Council may be less inclined to “cut” or soften, and more tempted to shield the most sensitive parts of the regulation.

The Future Cloud & AI and Development Act: a slippery slope for transatlantic dialogue

Furthermore, the European Commission has already announced a new initiative for 2026 on the development of cloud and artificial intelligence – the Cloud, AI and Development Act – with the aim of strengthening European capabilities in domains currently largely dominated by American players. It is realistic to expect political pressure in this type of dossier to openly or de facto introduce clauses that favor European (or “like-minded”) infrastructure and suppliers over solutions with a strong non-EU focus, starting with those from the United States. Here too, the political signal coming from Washington risks working against US companies themselves. If the perception, in the corridors of Brussels and the main European capitals, is that of a direct attack on a figure who symbolizes European digital sovereignty, it becomes easier for proponents of protectionist measures to invoke the need to “defend” the European regulatory and industrial space from external pressures.

Boomerang effect on US Big Tech

In both dossiers – Digital Omnibus and the Future Cloud/AI – the common thread is the same: the European drafters’ margin of political flexibility. The initiative against Breton risks reducing this margin, shifting the psychological center of gravity of the negotiations from a logic of technical adjustment to a dynamic of identity-based opposition between the “European model” and the “American model” of digital regulation.

The paradoxical result could be:

– a reduced willingness to simplify or clarify burdensome obligations for US platforms and suppliers;

– a greater propensity to introduce or strengthen clauses that reward European cloud, data, and AI providers, in the name of strategic autonomy.

For US technology companies, this would translate into concrete damage, far greater than the symbolism of a visa blacklist.

The issue of outdated information

Then there is an obvious problem of political targeting: Breton resigned from the Commission in September 2024, at the height of a rift with Ursula von der Leyen, who instead remained – and remains – the central figure in defining and implementing EU regulatory direction, supported by the relevant commissioners, including those responsible for competition, digital, and environment/energy, who directly affect DSA/DMA dossiers and their enforcement.

Targeting Breton today means relying on an outdated institutional framework: the day-to-day responsibility for implementing DSA and DMA falls on a new political and administrative team, not on those who led the first phase of regulatory design.

Hence the feeling that the US authorities are reacting too late to an enemy that, from an institutional perspective, no longer exists, while ignoring – or choosing not to touch – the real decision-makers who are shaping the future evolution of Europe’s digital landscape.

A move more symbolic than strategic

The decision to turn Breton into a personal target appears, ultimately, more like a political message to the EU (and its own internal constituency) than a strategic move aimed at influencing European regulatory policy.

But symbolic messages come at a cost: they harden positions, fuel closed-minded reflexes, reinforce the protectionist tendencies already present in debates on cloud, data, and AI in Europe, and make it more difficult to forge technical compromises capable of safeguarding both European regulatory sovereignty and American companies’ access to the EU market.If the goal was to loosen the grip of European digital regulation on US Big Tech, the Breton affair risks having the opposite effect.