According to Salla, the rules of Big Tech should be left in the hands of the new administration that enters the White House. “Big tech should be regulated by its continent of origin… That should be done, first and foremost, in the United States.”
President-elect Donald Trump has been vague about how he would regulate Big Tech companies, suggesting that “something” should be done about Google but hinting that breaking up the company could be a success. too far.
Salla’s critics are concerned about the way his arguments overlap with those of Meta. Bram Vranken, a researcher at Corporate Observatory Europe, a charity that tracks lobbying, says an open lettersigned by 49 industry figures, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and hosted on a Meta website, which echoes Salla’s position that AI companies should be able to use data from Europeans to innovate.
“He has an agenda very, very close to that of his former employer,” he says. “It is bad for confidence in EU policy that someone who used to be a lobbyist goes to Parliament to repeat the same talking points.” Salla maintains that his time at Meta did not change his views. “I was talking about digital regulation for a decade before joining Meta,” he says. “I have no ties to that company… It’s a big company and I don’t own any of its shares.”
Salla is among more than 700 MEPs. However, past debates on technology policy show that only a few outspoken MEPs can shape laws, Vranken says. “So if you do it right, you can also have a pretty big influence on the political stance that the EPP (your group) takes.” German MEP Andreas Schwab, a proponent of the Digital Markets Act and so far one of the EPP’s most prolific Big Tech members, told WIRED in March that the new rules should push the European Internet to “change for the better.”
Over the next five years, Salla expects one of his biggest challenges to arise from suggestions that the EU needs more technology regulation to close gaps in existing rules. “That worries me a lot,” he says. In Brussels, a digital equity law in response to problems ranging from addictive phone design to dark patterns and influencer marketing. Salla, however, believes the EU should focus on enforcing existing regulation, not proposing new rules.
“We need to have a stable investment environment for our companies,” he argues, “where we are not changing rules and legislation all the time.”