Eurobloat #0188 • December 2025
December delivered the Digital Services Act's first big fine, an arbitrary €120 million conjured out of X, along with yet another retreat on deforestation and a stirring new crackdown on dangerous toys.
Folly of the Month: a €120 million fine, plucked from the air
On 5 December the Commission issued its first Digital Services Act non-compliance fine, €120 million against X, partly for letting users pay for a blue tick. Asked how the figure was reached, the Commission offered only the "nature, gravity and duration" of the infringements and the word "proportionality", with no published method and, by one Washington account, no simple economic formula at all. A fine without a method is not enforcement; it is a number chosen because it sounded suitably large.
→ digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu
1. Fined for a tick
The penalty broke down as €45 million for the verification badge, €35 million for advertising transparency and €40 million for researcher access. Brussels has put a price on a blue checkmark, and it is forty-five million euros.
2. The first of many, the Commission promises
Lawyers read the fine as the moment the DSA entered its enforcement phase, with more to come. A formula nobody can explain is about to be applied to the rest of the internet.
3. A new transatlantic flashpoint
The fine instantly became a diplomatic incident, with American officials accusing Brussels of weaponising regulation against a United States company. The Union's idea of leadership is increasingly to fine its allies and call it sovereignty.
4. Even friendly analysts call it overreach
On 11 December a Washington think tank argued the X fine highlighted Europe's growing regulatory overreach. The reputation Brussels is building abroad is not the one it imagines.
→ itif.org
5. The deforestation law, postponed yet again
On 18 December the Council signed off a revision to "simplify and postpone" the deforestation regulation, the latest delay to a law that has lurched from crisis to crisis since birth. A rule the Union cannot bring itself to actually enforce is a rule that perhaps should not have been written this way.
6. At last, the menace of unsafe toys
On 23 December the Commission trumpeted stronger toy-safety rules, a new regulation entering into force on 1 January 2026, because no corner of the nursery is beyond the reach of fresh Brussels paperwork. Father Christmas now files for compliance.
→ single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu
7. Chat Control shuffles towards the finish line
Privacy campaigners warned that the long-running "Chat Control" plan to scan private messages was nearing its final hurdle. The idea refuses to die, because the urge to read everyone's messages is, for some in Brussels, eternal.
→ eff.org
8. The Digital Omnibus, now in full
The detailed Digital Omnibus text landed, easing the GDPR, the AI Act and the Data Act all at once. Lightening this load is welcome; doing it by reopening three landmark laws in a single bundle is how Brussels moves a great deal past everyone while admitting none of it was wise to begin with.
9. The 2035 engine ban, quietly reversed
On 16 December the Commission proposed letting carmakers meet a 90% emissions cut by 2035 rather than the 100% combustion-engine ban it had passed with such fanfare, reviving hybrids, e-fuels and the internal combustion engine. The flagship climate policy was unpicked barely two years after it was set in stone, which rather invites the question of why it was set in stone.
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