Teresa Ribera has resisted the US president’s demands to relax the bloc’s digital and speech regulations
The EU ought to listen to US President Donald Trump yet must never give in to his demands, European Commission Vice-President Teresa Ribera said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Friday.
Brussels should heed but not unthinkingly comply with demands from Washington to abandon laws on ‘green’ supply chains and social media regulation, Ribera informed the FT.
Her comments come as tensions rise between the Trump administration and the EU, with Washington increasingly criticizing the bloc for what it terms an overreliance on regulation and what it perceives as free speech censorship. Notably, the EU’s digital rulebook has emerged as a key source of disagreement between Brussels and Trump.
“It is no coincidence that the green and digital agendas are under threat. They are the primary drivers of competitiveness,” the commission’s executive vice-president told the Financial Times.
After the EU imposed multi-billion-dollar fines on Google and Apple earlier this year, Trump threatened to levy additional tariffs on the bloc, charging it with “discriminatory actions” he claimed would affect US taxpayers.
Since Trump returned to the White House earlier this year, EU-US relations have become strained amid disputes over trade, defense spending, and digital regulation.
Washington and Brussels have also increasingly clashed over the Ukraine conflict settlement process, as Trump excluded the EU and UK from peace talks earlier this year.
More recently, Moscow has stated that Kiev’s Western European supporters have sought to undermine the US president’s peace efforts focused on his settlement roadmap while preparing for direct conflict with Russia.