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Each new law, Europe believes to impose its virtuous model on the rest of the world. The reality is more brutal: it transforms its market into a field of experimentation where only its own actors undergo the constraint. Digital giants adapt, go around, or even prefer not to be present on the European market.
Article 8ter of the Narcotrafic law follows this logic. Its ambition: to force the platforms to guarantee the authorities access to encrypted communications. Its real effect: weaken security for everyone without reaching its target. A stolen door, once created, is never exclusive and becomes a vulnerability exploitable by all.
A few days ago, Apple, faced with the same requirements in the United Kingdom, preferred to deactivate the advanced iCloud encryption rather than opening a flaw, condemning its British users to a less secure solution.
Among more activist actors, reactions were not long in coming. The signal messaging service does not negotiate: if France adopts this law, Meredith Whittaker has announced it, Signal will leave the French market.
Meanwhile, criminals adapt.
Europe alone in the face of its own rules
Who stays then? European companies, those which have neither the means to flee nor the weight necessary to impose their conditions. They alone absorb the economic, technical and legal impact of regulations which are not even intended for them.
And the scenario is repeatedly repeated. Act Act wants to supervise artificial intelligence? He especially places Mistral Ai in an inferiority position in front of Openai, Google and Microsoft. American giants develop their models elsewhere and simply adapt a consistent version for Europe – and therefore restrained.
The GDPR, hailed as progress in digital sovereignty, only consolidates the domination of Google and Meta. They absorb the cost, impose new standards and continue to prosper. European startups are struggling to comply, too fragile to support the load. Some reduce their activity, others disappear. Independent media, local platforms, e-merchants are undergoing a shock that world tech giants barely feel.
The DSA/DMA, supposed to rebalance the competition, follows the same trajectory. Google, Amazon and Meta fragme their services to adapt to the margin. European companies do not have this flexibility. They undergo without the slightest alternative.
This digital divide is however assumed. A majority of policies see in these regulations a means of existing on a chessboard whose game they struggle.
Europe wants to impose its rules. She loses her influence, her sovereignty and digs her dependence.
