The European Union must “get rid of” US tech companies in order to better combat Trump’s America, an MEP linked to Ursula von der Leyen has said.
Aura Salla, a member of von der Leyen’s European People’s Party responsible for spearheading the EU’s upcoming Digital Omnibus reforms, insisted that the EU must be “brutal” in dealing with the United States, which has pulled ahead of Europe on AI.
According to the Finnish politician, efforts by Europe to regulate will never be respected by American companies, and that the bloc’s only option now is to throw the companies out of the bloc and build their own alternatives.
“We need to get rid of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple, Meta on this continent and focus on our own companies,” she said at an event in Brussels on May 5.
“They are just fooling around with us — with the Digital Services Act and any of these regulations.”
“So that’s why we need to be focusing on using our own tech so we can use more secure European technology and try to push these companies completely out of this market.”
Asked whether efforts should be made to punish the United States for challenging EU tech regulations via export sanctions on European silicon manufacturing processes, Salla agreed.
“I think we should be much more brutal. Maybe it is protectionist, but come on, look at what Trump is doing,” she said.
The tech event, hosted by EU Commission-friendly outlet Politico, has seen several European politicians voice ire at both US companies and the Trump administration.
American opposition to online censorship has not been the only sticking point, with EU officials also expressing anger at how it is increasingly being sidelined when it comes to artificial intelligence.
Eurocrats have been particularly incensed by the decision of Anthropic to exclude the European Union from any pre-release testing of its ‘Mythos’ digital security product.
The US firm delayed the product’s release over fears it could find major security exploits in public and private sector digital infrastructure, allowing certain private companies, as well as the US government, early access to the AI system to mitigate potential harms.
Brussels has not been afforded the same luxury, prompting indignant responses from those in the city.
“I think that we should shake the tree much, much harder,” Bart Groothuis, a Dutch MEP, said, complaining that it was unacceptable that the EU was currently “not at the table” regarding the system.