Eurobloat #0184 • August 2025
August was the month the AI Act began to bite, and the gold standard Brussels had paraded before the world was promptly denounced by Europe's own industrial champions, by America's tech giants, and by Washington, more or less in unison.
Folly of the Month: the gold standard nobody wanted
On 2 August the AI Act's rules for general-purpose AI models started to apply, complete with a Code of Practice the Commission insisted was both voluntary and essential. Within weeks Europe's leading firms, the American giants and the United States government had all declared it a brake on the very innovation it claimed to enable. A law that unites your champions and your rivals against you is a rare diplomatic achievement.
1. Forty champions ask for the brakes
More than forty European companies, among them ASML, Philips, Siemens and Mistral, had called for a two-year "clock-stop" before the rules took hold. The continent's industrial flagships were begging Brussels not to do the thing Brussels was about to do.
2. Google says it will slow Europe down
Google's Kent Walker warned that the Code risked slowing Europe's development and deployment of AI, even as the firm agreed to sign it. When the firms you hope will invest tell you your rules will drive them away, it is worth listening.
3. Meta says it will throttle the lot
Meta's Joel Kaplan went further, refusing to sign and calling the Code an overreach that would throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI in Europe. The Union prefers to read such verdicts as proof it is doing something right.
4. Written, conveniently, by the firms it binds
Civil society groups complained that United States tech companies had been given privileged access to shape the Code they would later have to follow. Regulatory capture is usually more discreet than this.
5. "Voluntary", in the Brussels sense
The Code was officially non-binding, which in practice meant firms ignored it at their peril. Brussels has perfected the voluntary rule you cannot afford to decline.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
6. Washington calls it a threat to its own economy
On 7 August an American commentary branded EU regulatory overreach unacceptable for the United States' energy and economy. The Union's rules increasingly arrive with a diplomatic incident attached.
7. The trade deal that settled nothing
Even after the new EU-US trade framework, Washington left the Union's digital rules pointedly unresolved, with American criticism of the DSA and DMA flagged as grounds for fresh trade action. The truce, it turned out, did not cover the regulators.
→ cov.com
8. The Vance broadside still echoes
The American Vice-President's earlier warning at the Paris summit, that regulation should foster AI rather than strangle it, hung over the whole rollout. Brussels pressed the button regardless, as it tends to.
9. Copyright and transparency demands nobody can meet
The Code piled on transparency and copyright obligations that critics judged vague and unworkable, from unstandardised opt-out signals to summaries nobody could define. A rulebook that its own subjects cannot interpret is a lawsuit waiting to be filed.
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