Microsoft has a plan to become the friendly face of Big Tech in Europe

Forget Trumpian bluster, Redmond wants to play nice, says Billy MacInnes

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Brad Smith, Microsoft

I have to admit that, as headlines go, ‘Microsoft announces new European digital commitments’ in a blog post by vice chair and president Brad Smith (pictured) on 30 April appears definitive. The software and services giant even has a five point plan – we all love a five point plan, don’t we? Well, not quite a plan more a list of commitments. They are as follows:

1. We will help build a broad AI and cloud ecosystem across Europe
2. We will uphold Europe’s digital resilience even when there is geopolitical volatility
3. We will continue to protect the privacy of European data
4. We will always help protect and defend Europe’s cyber security
5. We will help strengthen Europe’s economic competitiveness, including for open source

Microsoft makes a point of highlighting its 42-year presence in Europe and stresses that its business is “critically dependent on sustaining the trust of customers, countries, and governments across Europe. We respect European values, comply with European laws, and actively defend Europe’s cyber security. Our support for Europe has always been – and always will be – steadfast”.

The company also spotlighted its respect for European laws, adding that “even when we’ve lost cases in European courts, Microsoft has long respected and complied with European laws”.

Those laws apply to Microsoft’s business practices in Europe, “just as local laws apply to local practices in the United States and similar laws apply elsewhere in the world. This includes European competition law and the Digital Markets Act, among others. We’re committed not only to building digital infrastructure for Europe, but to respecting the role that laws across Europe play in regulating our products and services”.

I must admit to being intrigued by the timing of the publication of these commitments. For anyone not entirely clear about its significance, 30 April also happens to be the date marking 100 days in office for US president Donald Trump. How about that for a coincidence? I suppose it was easy to overlook. It’s not as if people were making a big deal out of it. No, not at all. And it’s not as if Trump’s said or done anything worth remarking on, is it? After all, that anti-EU stuff was all JD Vance.

Crisis averted

Thankfully, there are no potential sources of disagreement between the EU and Big Tech that could cause serious friction between the US and Europe. Nope. None whatsoever. It was definitely not the US administration that described the EU’s recent fines against Apple and Meta for breaching EU rules as “economic extortion”.  And, as Microsoft notes, tech companies have always willingly complied with European laws when they’ve lost cases in European courts.

Thankfully, technology companies are most definitely not trying to add EU data privacy, digital regulation and governance of artificial intelligence as issues that the Trump administration should seek to water down through its own form of “economic extortion”.

In any case, the greatest assurance that EU governments and citizens can have about the activities of US technology companies in Europe is that they will always stand up to the Trump administration if it seeks to circumvent the very regulations and governance that they are so keen to undermine for their own objectives. No matter, these companies will fight for the EU and its citizens against their own government and their own business models to the bitter end.

Microsoft in particular, must be completely confident that its US board will resist all threats from the government of the country where it is located to protect the interests of people far, far away. As for Europe, I think we can be assured that there is absolutely no way that the Trump administration would try to weaponise the EU’s reliance on US technology and service providers against it. It’s just not their way.

In that vein, I think most Europeans can look on Microsoft’s pledge to double its data centre numbers in Europe from 2023 to 2027 to support cloud and broad AI diffusion as a cause for celebration. There will be some carpers, no doubt, who might reflect on the implications of having ever increasing numbers of US-owned AI and cloud data centres in Europe hosting European data if, at some future date, the US administration should attempt to exert sovereignty over those facilities by taking legal action against a US-based company through an increasingly partisan and weaponised Department of Justice.

There has obviously been a significant amount of concern and unease being raised within Europe for Microsoft to feel the need to publish its “new European digital commitments”. The fact it seeks to label the list as “new” when, let’s face it, the five commitments are so basic as to not need repeating says something about the wariness and lack of trust which has arisen on this side of the Atlantic in the past 100 days.

Trust me, things are not normal if you’re being forced to publicly guarantee something that everyone previously took for granted.

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