European tech policy leaders are cautious.
Democrats won both chambers of Congress, many of whom campaigned on reigning in tech billionaires, curtailing energy-intensive data centers, and imposing artificial intelligence safety rules. These positions could bring US tech policy much closer to Europe’s strict approach.
But European politicians and analysts warned against exaggerated expectations. A lame-duck President Donald Trump retains the key powers over trade, tech, and foreign policy.
“Trump retains extensive foreign policy powers and a legislative veto,” says Javier Carbonell, a policy analyst at the European Policy Center. “His reaction remains unpredictable: domestic constraints could even encourage greater international activism. Europeans should not mistake electoral change for a return to transatlantic normality.”
The Trump administration has been aggressive in its opposition to European tech rules, denouncing them for targeting Silicon Valley success stories. After the European Commission fined Google in July under the new Digital Markets Act, President Trump called the penalties “Illegal” and “highly discriminatory.” The President spoke about launching a formal Section 301 trade investigation to probe whether the law unfairly disadvantages US commerce — and threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs if the fines are not reversed.
Beyond trade, the administration accused European digital laws of censorship. House Republicans held a hearing called “Europe’s Threat to American Speech and Innovation: Part II.” Ohio Republican Jim Jordan, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, retained his seat but will lose his committee position when Democrats take control.
The committee’s Democrats hold different opinions. They rejected their Republican colleagues’ claims, insisting that European governments have legitimate reasons to regulate illegal content.
The biggest transatlantic convergence could come over AI safety and data centers. Many Democrats campaigned against energy-gobbling data centers. In 10 states, voters approved moves to place moratoriums on new data center construction.
Moves to impose similar data center moratoriums are emerging in Europe. Just days after the US midterm elections, more than 100 civil society and environmental groups launched a massive, coordinated “Stop Dirty Data Centres” wave of protests across 15 European countries.
AI safety represents another potential point of rapprochement. The elections may signal the end of the US “self-policing” strategy. Democratic leaders have pledged to upend this laissez-faire approach and are working on rules around AI safety that they could now push through with a congressional majority. Some Republicans have already joined them.
Europe has already passed an AI Act. It imposes strict requirements on high-risk AI and bans certain use cases, including, with narrow exceptions, live facial recognition by law enforcement in publicly accessible spaces. Companies producing general-purpose AI models deemed to pose systemic risks must test their models and take steps to reduce those risks. Breaking these rules can bring fines of up to €15 million or 3% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher. For large companies, fines for banned AI practices can reach €35 million or 7% of annual global turnover, whichever is higher.
This fall, France pushed for a G7 agreement to coordinate safety evaluations of advanced AI models and share information about risks and incidents through a new high-level working group. The Trump administration scuttled the agreement as “unnecessary bureaucracy.”
Another irritant is Europe’s fear of a “kill switch.” US export controls on advanced AI semiconductors, since reversed, fueled calls for “digital sovereignty.” The recent shutoff of Starlink in Ukraine added to European worries. A democratic Congress could attempt to calm these fears.
Democrats have also pushed for a federal privacy law limiting how companies collect and use personal information. That could narrow the gap with Europe, where privacy concerns have generated numerous court cases calling for a stop to transatlantic data transfers. The EU-US Data Privacy Framework allows personal data to flow. Congress could make those protections harder for a president to reverse by writing them into legislation.
An irony looms over the shift of power in Washington. The Democratic-controlled Congress looks set to increase tech regulation — just while Europe is moving to “simplify” and roll back some of its regulation in the name of increased competitiveness.
In the US, “sentiment towards the AI industry — the backbone of the current US economy — is souring,” notes Koen de Leus, Chief Economist of BNP Paribas Fortis. “Europe, on the other hand, is gradually — very slowly — moving in the opposite direction,” aiming to make “doing business across the Union easier.”
Transatlantic convergence could be possible. The allies, long divided over tech, might meet somewhere in the middle.
William Echikson is a non-resident Senior Fellow at CEPA and editor of Bandwidth.
Dr. Anda Bologa is a Brussels-based Senior Researcher at CEPA.
Bandwidth is CEPA’s online journal dedicated to advancing transatlantic cooperation on tech policy. All opinions expressed on Bandwidth are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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