EU tech chief says US, Europe closer on tech rules

EU technology chief Henna Virkkunen said Europe and the United States are closer on tech regulation than critics suggest, arguing that US courts often pursue the same companies and practices that EU laws target in advance.

Virkkunen, the European Commission's executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, spoke to AFP on the sidelines of a G20 meeting of technology ministers in North Carolina on Sept. 2.

“The differences are not so big when we look at it in practice,” she said. “In Europe, we have regulation in advance, and in the USA they are often coming with the court cases.”

Her comments followed sessions addressed by industry figures including Nvidia's Jensen Huang and Elon Musk, who repeated criticism that Europe over-regulates technology. Virkkunen rejected that view, saying she did not see innovation and regulation as opposing goals.

She cited a recent Eurobarometer survey in which 80 percent of European respondents said careful regulation of artificial intelligence was important for safety. She said Brussels would bring forward proposals to streamline some EU rules, while arguing that the EU's AI Act avoided the spread of separate national rules across the bloc.

Virkkunen said the clearest convergence with the United States was on protecting minors on social media. She pointed to Meta's recent settlement with nearly every US state, promising curfews and time limits for teens on Instagram and Facebook, and said some protections were already required in Europe under the Digital Services Act.

She also said Brussels was pursuing concerns about addictive platform design. The Commission published preliminary findings in July on the design of Meta's services and earlier findings on how Meta checks whether users are at least 13. It has also issued preliminary findings against TikTok on addictive design and opened an investigation into Snapchat.

On AI safety, Virkkunen said enforcement powers attached to the EU AI Act took effect in August and that most leading AI developers had cooperated voluntarily with the Commission before then. She said companies that want to operate in Europe must comply with European rules.

Virkkunen also said debate over data centres was already lively in some EU member states and argued that careful planning was needed so facilities were not concentrated only in countries with abundant cheap clean power.