Breaking Up Is Hard for E.U. ⇥ politico.eu

Mathieu Pollet and Anouk Schlung, Politico:

Sensing a change in the air, Big Tech firms have wasted no time rolling out offerings meant to soothe — and cash in on — Europe’s unease.

Over the past year, U.S. hyperscalers have rushed to build products with EU-based governance structures and local operators, while doubling down on technical and legal safeguards. “Our industry, frankly, is doing a lot to address [the concerns] insofar as possible,” said Guido Lobrano, the director general for Europe of tech lobby ITI.

But critics have been dismissing their attempts as “sovereignty washing.” “Marketers realized it sells. Trump was a great salesman for this idea,” said Philippe Latombe, a centrist member of the French parliament.

The red alert push for digital sovereignty is really only about a year-and-a-half old, at most, and it is remarkable what E.U. countries have been able to achieve in that time. Yet it is a fraught and challenging operation, regardless. These big U.S.-based companies are deeply embedded into everything we do and a clean break was never going to be possible, in large part because it is not designed to be easy. That is not to say it is deliberately designed to be difficult — despite the consumer-level evidence offered by Amazon’s Prime cancellation procedure — only that there are few incentives to help users leave.