In this commentary for Lawfare, Mark MacCarthy and Kenneth Propp analyze the European Commission’s Digital Omnibus proposal. Although the actual changes proposed to the General Data Protection Directive and the AI Act are modest, it does represent a dramatic course correction away from the protective digital regime the European Union has constructed over the past decade.
The changed course is more a reaction to home-grown fears that its digital regulations impede innovation by European companies than it is the result of outside pressure from the Trump administration.
But the Commission might be choosing the wrong policy lever to achieve the digital sovereignty it seeks. It might instead imitate the new focus in the U.S. on subsidies, loans and tax credits for vital tech industries like chips and AI language models.
By turning to regulatory relief instead of more active industrial policy measures, the EU might very well be lost in a shadow war of the past rather than forging forward-looking policies for the future.
To read the full article on Lawfare, click here.
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