While the European Commission plans to strike advertising revenues from American platforms in response to tariff climbing triggered by Donald Trump, a strategic question is essential: can Europe target the Big Tech without compromising its own economic, industrial and digital interests? Behind the apparent symmetry of retaliatory measures, the risk of boomerang effect is very real.
An unprecedented measure: the price, not the tax
The proposal defended by Ursula von der Leyen differs fundamentally from traditional tax systems. It is not a digital tax voted by a Member State (as in France or Italy), but a Commercial rate applied to the single market scale on income from online advertising.
The legal basis of this approach is based on theEU anti-coercion instrumentwhich authorizes a response proportionate to foreign economic pressures. By targeting advertising revenues, the Commission chooses a symbolic and strategic lever: these financial flows fuel the domination of American giants in the European digital market.
Massive European dependence
But hitting this income is also to strike an ecosystem on which thousands of European players depend. More than 90 % of the online advertising market In the EU is controlled by Google, Meta and Amazon. European companies-startups, e-merchants, SMEs-use their tools daily to generate sales, recruit, or simply exist online.
Reduce the profitability of these platforms could mechanically lead to a Advertising price increasea Lower visibility of small advertisersor even a Restructuring of certain B2C markets. By taxing the dominant digital infrastructure, the EU takes the risk of penalizing European users before slowing down the American owners.
Assumed geopolitical arbitration
The logic of the commission is clear: respond to American trade attacks where they are hurting. President Trump, excluding the external accounts of his country, neglects the fact that the United States has increased substantial surpluses each year on digital services sold in Europe.
By targeting these surpluses, Brussels wants to establish a more equitable balance of power. But this strategy presupposes internal consensus and strong political resilience, because the divergent interests between Member States can weaken the initiative. Ireland, where Google and Meta have their European seats, could for example oppose direct or indirect resistance to the uniform application of this measure.
The fragility of an asymmetrical balance of power
Europe has no equivalent to Google or Meta. No continental player has a comparable grip on advertising flows, behavioral data or targeting tools. Hitting these platforms is also recognize structural dependence to extra-European tools, without a credible short-term alternative.
Except to cause forced acceleration of investment in sovereign alternatives – which would require financial means and large -scale political coordination -, the immediate effect of such taxation would be to increase the cost of access to the European digital market for its own companies.
A default strategy for lack of technological options
The planned advertising tax is as much of the political response as of the substitution strategy. Europe, without technological giant in programmatic advertising or search engines, has no choice but to use the regulatory lever to influence the distribution of value. But without ability to replace existing tools, this posture remains fragile.
📌 Take Away
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- The planned rate would target advertising revenues from Big Tech on the European market.
- It would indirectly affect European companies that depend on these platforms.
- It reveals the EU’s strategic dependence to digital infrastructure that it does not control.
- The effectiveness of the measure will depend on political consensus and the ability to amortize the secondary economic effects.
- In the absence of technological sovereignty, the EU uses the commercial lever to restore power balance.
