Why the EU should fear an exodus of Big Tech companies

Politicians are making the EU a hostile environment for Big Tech. It would be wise to tread more carefully, says Matthew Lynn.

Bruno Le Maire and Robert Habeck
Le Maire and Habeck: giving Facebook the elbow
(Image credit: © REUTERS / Alamy)

It was not the kind of warning you see very often in company statements. In its annual report filed with regulators in New York earlier this month, Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, stated bluntly that it may be forced to pull its operations from the EU. The reason? That planned rules for transferring data between America and the EU were so onerous it would be impossible for the company to operate anymore. Leaving would be the only responsible option.

You might think that would be of concern to the EU’s leaders. Meta is, after all, one of the world’s biggest, most innovative, and fastest-growing businesses with a market value of close on $600bn and more than two billion users, and which is investing huge sums in new products. Politicians usually bend over backwards to persuade those kinds of companies to invest more, not less, in their countries. Yet the continent’s power-brokers could hardly be more pleased. “Life would be very good without Facebook,” said French finance minister Bruno le Maire, alongside German counterpart Robert Habeck. Both made it clear that driving Meta out of the continent would be a victory for their policies.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.