The Irish presidency of the Council of the European Union arrives at a pivotal moment for European tech policy – and for the relationship between Brussels and Washington.
Ireland has taken over the Council Presidency at a moment when digital policy is moving faster than at any point in the past decade.
Between now and December, the country will oversee negotiations on a stack of legislation that will shape how Europe regulates technology, how European businesses compete, and how the bloc relates to the United States. The scale of the task is significant. So is the opportunity.
The centrepiece is the Tech Sovereignty Package, a bundle of legislation designed to reduce Europe’s dependence on non-EU suppliers of chips, cloud infrastructure, and AI. The revised Chips Act extends Europe’s semiconductor ambitions beyond manufacturing into supply chains and new industrial programmes. The Cloud and AI Development Act sets out a framework for assessing the trustworthiness of cloud and AI providers. Ireland, as the European home of most major American tech companies, will play a central role in how both frameworks are applied in practice.
Running alongside this is the Digital Omnibus, an effort to simplify the tangle of data protection, cybersecurity, and digital rules that have accumulated over recent years. The aim is a lighter compliance load for businesses and a more coherent legal landscape. It is, on paper, straightforward. In practice, it is the most technically and politically complex file the presidency will handle.
Then there is the Digital Fairness Act. Due to emerge from the Commission in the final months of the presidency, it is already generating significant attention. The Act is designed to bring consumer protection law into the digital age, addressing dark patterns (those manipulative design tricks that push users toward unwanted choices), addictive product features, personalised pricing, and the protection of minors online.
Ireland has a particular interest here. The government, as many others across the continent, has made child online safety an important theme of the Presidency, and the DFA is one of the most significant legislative tools available to address it. The file is being steered in the Commission by Ireland’s own Commissioner, Michael McGrath.
The consumer protection stakes are real. Commission-owned research found that 79 per cent of websites deploy dark patterns of some kind. The DFA would create horizontal rules covering these practices across the entire digital market – not just social media, but marketplaces, apps, games, and beyond.
Across all of this runs the thread of EU-US relations – and it is a fraught one.
Trade tensions over digital regulation continue to grow. President Trump has threatened tariffs on countries that impose digital taxes on U.S. technology companies, while his administration has also criticised EU digital regulations as discriminatory. The European Commission maintains that it has the sovereign right to regulate, but the dispute has intensified following a preliminary finding that AWS and Microsoft Azure could be designated as gatekeepers under the Digital Markets Act.
President Trump has threatened 100 per cent tariffs on any country that levies digital services taxes on American platforms. In his administration’s view, the EU’s enforcement of landmark digital market and services rules – the Digital Markets Act, which promotes competition in digital markets, and the Digital Services Act, which governs online platform responsibilities – are de facto digital service taxes.
The EU-U.S. trade deal, which entered into force on July 1st, has eased some of the broader tariff pressure and created a slightly more stable foundation. But digital remains the most contested frontier.
Washington is watching how Europe regulates American technology companies closely, and not always patiently. The Irish Presidency will need to keep these frameworks workable – avoiding language that tips into protectionism – while holding firm on Europe’s right to set its own rules. Ireland’s deep ties to American industry are an asset.
Six months is a short time. But in EU terms, a presidency sets tone, pace, and direction. Ireland should use every advantage it has.
