Sawt Falasteen - EU tech chief urges US cooperation as key decisions near

"Big tech companies know that closer cooperation on regulation would benefit their businesses," Virkkunen told AFP after meeting with top Silicon Valley CEOs, including Meta's Mark Zuckerberg and Apple's Tim Cook.

Virkkunen's visit to Silicon Valley and Washington was the first since she took her position late last year and the first since President Donald Trump took office in January, taking a harsh line against European policies that he says punish the United States unfairly.

That hard line has been welcomed by some tech CEOs, most notably Meta's Zuckerberg, who has actively lobbied the White House to hit back at Brussels on European tech rules, equating them to tariffs that should be brought to the table in Trump's trade battles with Europe.

Virkkunen said Zuckerberg's lobbying Trump was "normal" from big companies that will always do what they can to defend their interests.

But "European rules...are the same for European companies, Asian companies, and US companies, so they are not trade barriers," she said.

On her US tour, Virkkunen was also meeting top US officials, many of whom slam the EU's landmark Digital Services Act as a form of government censorship.

The DSA requires companies to adequately police content online or face fines, potentially reaching up to 6 percent of a company's global annual revenue after a lengthy back and forth between Brussels and companies.

Virkkunen said Brussels' findings on investigations opened against Elon Musk-owned X, Meta and others would come soon.

- Lengthy investigation -

Her office has faced criticism in Europe that these probes have moved too slowly, perhaps delayed to avoid making waves with the Trump-led White House.

Virkkunen said that these 10 major investigations would be finalized "in the coming weeks and months... because they are starting to be at that stage."

Defending the long wait, Virkkunen said the coming decisions were the first under the DSA, "and that's why the legal and technical teams wanted to work very carefully and make sure that we always have a very strong legal basis when we are making decisions."

Despite the diplomatic turbulence that is likely to come from the results of the investigations, Virkkunen believes that both the United States and the EU would be better served by working more closely on setting rules governing big tech.

"Close cooperation would benefit both of us because for the US and tech companies, the European Union is the biggest external market. Many of them have many more users in the European Union than they have in the US," she added.

Virkkunen pointed to Meta, saying that the company had more users in Europe using Instagram, the photo-sharing app, than in the United States.

"If we are working together with the US, when we look at regulations and standards, what we are setting is the global scale, it would also be much easier for their companies to operate globally," she said.

U.AlSharif--SF-PST