Global security depends on a strong Europe. That won’t happen until the EU ceases its regulatory imperialism.
The EU’s regulatory overkill on climate and tech is hindering a pro-growth trade deal between the U.S. and its largest trading partner. After Brussels this summer to ease emissions policies and reduce other trade barriers, EU regulators in recent weeks have slapped censorious fines on social media platform X, opened investigations into Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, and Google, and declined to rein in far-reaching climate mandates that impose liability on activities outside of Europe. One does not have to support protectionist tariffs or protracted trade wars to see why Washington needs to continue using trade as leverage to pressure Eurocrats to give up micromanaging tech platforms and supply chains around the world.
As JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently pointed out at the Ronald Reagan National Defense Forum in California, Europe has a “” with overregulation, which has flatlined economic growth across the EU. Around the time of the Great Recession, the U.S. and EU GDPs were . America’s economy is now over larger, a whopping $10 trillion difference that’s roughly equal to the combined GDPs of Germany, France, and Italy, the EU’s three largest economies.
Europe’s stagnation is self-inflicted. EU rules have driven out innovation. According to the “,” a manifesto published last month by three European academics (one of whom is a former EU lawmaker), the descent started when Brussels ditched its initial mandate of eliminating trade barriers between member states for “the superstition of regulation,” a one-way ratchet toward an ever-expanding bureaucratic state. “Each new regulatory text justified the next,” they write, “creating a governance culture where ‘more Europe’ became the answer to every question.”
The trio singles out climate and digital technology as noteworthy examples of Europe’s regulatory overreach. Both are flashpoints in the ongoing trade negotiations between the U.S. and the EU.
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