European tech CEOs call for ‘Europe first’ mentality after Trump’s victory

LISBON, Portugal – Tech CEOs in Europe are calling on countries in the region to take bolder action to challenge the dominance of Big Tech and fight the reliance on the US for critical technologies like artificial intelligence after Donald Trump’s election win.

The Republican politician’s victory was a major topic among prominent tech bosses at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon, Portugal. Many officers said they were unsure what to expect from the US president-elect, citing unpredictability as a major challenge today.

Andy Yen, CEO of the Swiss VPN developer Proton, said that Europe should echo American protectionism and adopt a more “Europe-first” approach to technology – partly to reverse the trend of the last two decades, during which many of the most important in the Western world. technology, from web browsing to smartphones, has become dominated by a handful of large US tech companies.

A VPN, or virtual private network, is a service that encrypts data and masks users’ IP addresses to hide their browsing activity and bypass censorship.

“It’s time for Europe to step up,” Yen told CNBC on the sidelines of the Web Summit. “It’s time to be bold. It’s time to be more aggressive. And the time is now, because we now have leaders in the US who are ‘America-first,’ so I think our European leaders should be ‘Europe-first.'”

One of the main thrusts of the past decade from the European Union is to take legal action and introduce tough new regulations to overcome the dominance of large technology players, such as Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.

As Trump prepares to take office for a second term, concerns have grown that Europe may balk at its tough approach to the tech giant for fear of retaliation from the new administration.

If Proton, for one, is urging the EU not to limit its efforts to control the American technology giant.

“Europe has been thinking with a very global mindset. They think that we have to be fair to everyone, we have to open the market to everyone, we have to play fairly, because we believe in fairness,” he told CNBC.

“Well, guess what? America and the Chinese didn’t get the memo. They played very unfairly for the last 20 years. And now they have the most ‘America-first’ president.”

Mitchell Baker, former CEO of the American open internet non-profit Mozilla Foundation, said the EU DMA has led to meaningful changes for the Firefox browser, with increased activity since Google implemented a “choice screen” on Android phones that allows users to select searches. machine.

“Changes in Firefox’s new users and market share on Android are noticeable,” Baker said. “That’s good for us – but it’s also an indicator of the power and centralized distribution that the company has.”

He added, “This change in usage is because one of the selection screens is not the full picture. But it is an indicator of the type of goods that consumers cannot choose and businesses cannot succeed because of the way the technology. the industry is structured today.”

Thomas Plantenga, CEO of Lithuanian second-hand clothing resale app Vinted, urged Europe to take “the right choice” to ensure the continent can “save itself” and not be “left behind.”

“If you look realistically at what the country is doing, it’s trying to take care of itself and trying to build a coalition to be stronger, and as a coalition to be stronger,” Plantenga told CNBC in an interview. “We have a lot of talented, well-educated people.”

“We must (to) ensure that we can maintain our own safety, that we can maintain our own energy, that we keep investing in education and innovation so that we can follow the rest of the world),” he said. “Otherwise, we’ll be left behind. In every collaboration, it’s always a trade. And if we don’t have much to trade, we’re weaker.”

Another theme that attracted much of the conversation at the Web Summit was the idea of ​​”AI sovereignty” – which refers to countries and regions localizing the critical computing infrastructure behind AI services, so that the system becomes more reflective of regional languages, cultures and values.

With Microsoft becoming a key player in AI, concerns have arisen that the provider of the Windows operating system and Office suite of productivity tools has gained a dominant position when it comes to basic AI tools.

The tech giant is the main proponent behind ChatGPT maker OpenAI, whose technology is also widely used in its own products.

For some startups, Microsoft’s decision to embrace AI has had dangerous anti-competitive effects.

Last year, Microsoft raised the search engine’s fees for using the Bing Search API, which allows developers to access the tech giant’s backend search infrastructure – partly due to higher fees attached to AI-powered search features.

“They are gradually reducing our revenue – we still rely on it – and reducing our capacity to do things,” Christian Kroll, CEO of sustainability-focused search engine Ecosia, told CNBC. “Microsoft is a very fierce competitor.”

CNBC has reached out to Microsoft for comment.

Ecosia recently partnered with fellow search provider Qwant to build a European search index and reduce reliance on US Big Tech to generate web browsing results.

Meanwhile, the European Union’s AI Act, an important artificial intelligence law with global implications, introduces new transparency requirements and restrictions on companies developing and using AI.

The legislation is likely to have a major impact on US tech companies, as they are the ones driving the development of – and investment in – AI.

With Trump coming to power, it’s unclear what that means for the global AI regulatory landscape.

Shelley McKinley, chief legal officer of the code repository platform GitHub, said she can’t predict what Trump will do in his second term – but the business is planning for a number of different scenarios.

“We’re going to learn in the next few months what President Trump is going to say, and in January we’re going to start seeing some of what President Trump is doing in this area,” McKinley said during a CNBC moderated panel earlier this week.

“I think it’s important that we all, as a society, as a business, as people, continue to think about different scenarios,” he said. “I think, as politics change, as the world changes, we’re still thinking about all the possible scenarios.”