This week we celebrate the first-year anniversary of the Helsinki office. It has been a great year full of interesting projects. The office has been busy from day one and we continue to make fantastic recruits. One of the specialities of Geradin Partners across the firm relates to tech regulation. We were the first law firm to create a Platform Law practice focusing on digital ecosystems, and advising clients on digital markets rules relating to app stores, search engines, ecommerce platforms and so on.
Now, for the past few months, the European Commission has been under pressure by the US administration to weaken or even repeal its digital legislation, such as the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). The US administration has invoked a variety of reasons, such as the fact that these rules would discriminate against US companies, that fines that are imposed on US companies when they break them amount to taxes, or even that these rules are an attack against free speech.
So far, the Commission has resisted this pressure. In April 2025, the European Commission fined Apple €500 million and Meta €200 million for failing to comply with the DMA, and in September 2025, the Commission imposed a 2,95 billion fine on Google for its anticompetitive practices in the AdTech sector. European Vice-President Ribera made it clear that the Commission would continue to apply EU digital legislation and competition law as these were non-negotiable.
This is the right approach for three reasons. First, the Commission needs to protect EU sovereignty. As long as US big tech companies sell their goods and services in the EU, they need to comply with EU rules. The same principle applies when EU-based companies want to operate in third countries. Second, these rules are needed to create a level playing field in digital markets (e.g., the DMA), and protect EU citizens against harmful content (e.g., the DSA). Finally, if the Commission was to cede to US pressure with respect to digital legislation, the US administration would soon come back and ask for more concessions, for instance on food safety rules, pharmaceuticals, etc.
