Late summer is usually when Brussels empties out, as Eurocrats decamp for Mediterranean beaches and Alpine hiking trails. By mid-August, my neighborhood near Flagey can feel as stagnant as the Ixelles ponds.
This year, though, that quiet will be partly deceptive. The next few months are primed to become one of the most consequential stretches for tech policy in years. Two dates — July 13 and Aug. 2 — could set the European Union on even more of a collision course with America’s biggest tech companies.
On July 13, the Commission’s panel on social media will finally provide recommendations to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on how to protect minors. As my prior reporting has shown, member states have spent months gearing up for national social media bans. Germany in recent days even pushed for a blanket EU-wide ban for users under 13 — perhaps the clearest indication yet of where the winds are blowing.
Whatever Von der Leyen receives in July will be closely watched. A social media ban of any kind on the EU-level would be a major escalation in transatlantic relations. After all, the social media platforms most commonly used by Europeans are almost entirely U.S.-owned.
Then comes Aug. 2, when some of the most powerful provisions of the EU AI Act begin to apply to large general-purpose AI models like ChatGPT, Claude and Mistral. From that date, European regulators will have the power to demand documentation from companies, conduct evaluations of models and — if the companies refuse to comply — take models off the market entirely.
The EU can also levy big fines, up to 3% of global turnover. For a company like Anthropic, which is projected to bring in nearly $50 billion in 2026, that could mean billions of euros. That’s serious money, even by Big Tech standards.
However, how the AI Office will use its new powers is an open question. As is the reaction of AI giants.
“Taking the model off the market would be the ultimate escalation,” said Jimmy Farrell, EU AI policy lead at Pour Demain, a European tech think tank, during a talk at the Large-Scale AI Risks Conference in Leuven on Wednesday. He said the EU compliance costs for companies like Anthropic are tiny compared to the vast size of the European market, making it more likely that companies will comply, at least initially.
There are also smaller items on the summer agenda: the EU is reviewing its merger guidelines, which could have an outsize impact on tech policy; more DSA investigations and fines are likely following May’s action against Temu; and Competition Commissioner Teresa Ribera indicated earlier this week that cloud providers Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure should fall under the Digital Market Act, potentially opening another front in Brussel’s campaign to rein in U.S. tech firms.
There’s also the EU’s recently unveiled tech sovereignty package, which will certainly be debated more over the summer.
All that tech policy action makes one thing clear: even after this week’s canicule breaks, the temperature will keep rising for Big Tech.
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