Silicon Valley, meet your likely new European enforcers. On Tuesday morning, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen—recently re-elected by lawmakers—announced her new team, comprising representatives of each EU member state.
If confirmed by the European Parliament after hearings, these are the people who will propose new EU laws, and in many cases enforce those that are already in place.
For the tech industry, the most important will probably be Teresa Ribera, who is set to take over from the long-serving Margrethe Vestager as Europe’s antitrust chief.
Ribera, a socialist, served as Spain’s vice president and environment minister—and will indeed also be responsible for shepherding the implementation of the EU’s Green Deal.
But in her antitrust role, she would be responsible for deciding whether Google should be broken up or not.
Vestager threatened to force Google to sell some of its ad-tech businesses last year, saying it may be the only way to deal with Google’s monopolistic position on both the buy and sell sides of the online advertising market.
Reuters reported Friday that the Commission won’t take such a drastic step, but the decision may now be Ribera’s to make.
If confirmed, Ribera will also inherit an investigation into the rapidly evolving AI sector.
Vestager’s team has been particularly interested in the trend of big AI players hiring top execs from smaller AI companies and licensing their technology, as has happened with Microsoft and Inflection. Some fear that this is a tactic designed to get around the antitrust restrictions on more traditional mergers.
Ribera will also be the main enforcer of the Digital Markets Act, a recently enacted law that places strict limitations on the behavior of Big Tech “gatekeepers” like Meta, Google, and Apple—all of which are already subjects of non-compliance probes.
The Spaniard certainly has big shoes to fill. Vestager has been a groundbreaking competition chief who made tax justice a competition issue by forcing Ireland to claim $14.4 billion in back-taxes from Apple, and who hit Google with three enormous antitrust fines running to a collective $9.3 billion.
The Dane was not re-nominated by her country due to her liberal party’s dwindling fortunes back home, but she goes out on a high, with the EU’s top court last week upholding both her Apple decision and one of the Google fines. (A lower court will rule on Google’s appeal in another of those cases on Wednesday.)
Meanwhile, von der Leyen’s tech policy pick is Finland’s Henna Virkkunen, a center-right former communications specialist who has just wrapped up a term as a member of the European Parliament.
One of Virkkunen’s chief roles would be to enforce the Digital Services Act, a recent bundle of rules covering content moderation among other things. As a lawmaker, she played a key role in shaping the DSA as it went through the legislative process.
The DSA has until now been primarily enforced by France’s Thierry Breton, a former CEO of France Telecom who has made waves in the U.S. by regularly sparring with Elon Musk over X’s alleged contravention of the new rulebook.
Indeed, when Breton publicly warned Musk about spreading disinformation in Musk’s interview with former President Donald Trump last month, he didn’t first clear the move with von der Leyen and other colleagues—and reports suggest her resulting outrage is a key reason why she rejected Breton’s re-nomination to the Commission.
X already faces DSA charges and, if confirmed, Virkkunen would also take over formal DSA investigations into Meta and AliExpress.
Leaving Big Tech aside, European startups will also be getting their very first dedicated commissioner, in the form of Bulgaria’s Ekaterina Zaharieva.
Stéphane Séjourné, France’s replacement for Breton as Commission nominee, would probably also have an impact on the tech sector as chief of industrial strategy.
Editor’s note: An earlier version incorrectly identified the court that would rule on Google’s appeal as the EU’s top court.
