Banks and the noisy geopolitics of big tech regulation in Europe

Abstract

The EU’s Digital Markets Act represents an ambitious attempt to curtail Big Techs’ market and infrastructural power by imposing significant new ex ante regulatory obligations on the largest digital platforms or ‘gatekeepers’. The EU requirements are designed to constrain Big Techs’ ability to exploit economies of scale and network effects to the detriment of market competition and consumer protection. Although the DMA does not regulate platform financial services directly, EU financial regulators and EU financial institutions were amongst the most vocal and influential supporters of the EU’s new digital regulatory agenda. How can we explain this? Drawing on theories of business power, we argue that financial actors leveraged their influence through ‘noisy geopolitics’ by expanding the breadth of the anti-Big Tech coalition and reframing their preferences around the EU’s emergent digital sovereignty agenda. In contrast, the coalition of (predominantly) US Big Techs and US officials increasingly fragmented in the face of mounting political opposition at home and the failure to find wider business allies in Europe.