Europe’s “hardest weapon” cannot now be used against the USA – “fuel for Trump”

Europe is unable to use its “hardest weapon” in trade negotiations with the United States, MEP Aura Salla (kok) said Kauppalehti live In the Talousamau program on Monday.

European Commission ordered last week, the search engine fined Google a total of 890 million euros for violating the EU digital market regulation. On Friday, the President of the United States Donald Trump threatenedthat the USA will impose new tariffs on products imported from the EU in response to the fines received by Google.

“This shows the problem with the regulation of the digital market. I myself have proposed that we should set a price and a duty on data. Currently, US technology giants transfer data freely from Europe to the US, where they develop their products,” said Salla.

If the data had a price, it would also be included in trade negotiations, according to Salla.

“At the moment, data is defined as a service, and for that reason it is not included in the trade agreement negotiations. But it is actually the strongest weapon that Europe would have for trade agreement negotiations with the United States,” said Salla.

He compared the importance of data to, for example, cobalt or lithium, and he believes that it should be included in trade agreement negotiations.

“Now it’s not there, and Trump is now misusing this, so to speak, because the digital market regulation gives him such fuel for the flames of trade negotiations,” Salla said.

Salla has acted as the chief negotiator of the EU Parliament’s industry committee in the digital legislation simplification package. Earlier in his career, he has worked for Facebook’s background company Methane as social relations manager responsible for EU affairs.

Monday’s Talousam was hosted by a journalist Heidi Huotilainen.

You can watch Monday’s Economic Morning in its entirety below.