Big Tech, the European Union, and Democratic Self-Defense

In recent years, there has been an escalating conflict between some of the largest US-based tech companies (“Big Tech”) and the European Union. The EU’s efforts to regulate digital matters in the interests of its citizens (DMA, DSA, AI Act) conflicts with the desire of Big Tech to develop and market products as freely as possible. In this paper, I examine this conflict from the perspective of democratic theory. I take as starting point a growing literature that describes the power of Big Tech vis-à-vis democratic societies as a form of domination. As large tech companies shape key preconditions of democracy, e.g., the public sphere, through the provision of platform infrastructures and AI technologies, they are in a position to arbitrarily interfere with processes of self-government (Taylor 2021; Aytac 2024; Hoeksema 2024). A discussion about how this problem could be addressed is in full swing. For example, proposals for social media reform include more proactive legislation, public service platforms, and models for digital commons (see Patberg 2025). Similarly, with regard to AI, various ideas for democratic innovations have been put forward, aiming at civic participation in the development and deployment of new technologies (Zimmermann forthcoming). The problem of many of these proposals is that they usually assume – at least implicitly – a context of fairly well-functioning US democracy as well as firm democratic orientations among Big Tech players. I argue that this is no longer adequate given the political situation in the US, where the emergence of a political alliance between the “tech oligarchy” (Cohen 2025) and the Trump administration goes hand in hand with democratic regression and a foreign policy agenda characterized by more or less open hostility towards liberal democracies in Europe (Mudde 2025). In this constellation, the regulation of ‘the digital’ needs to be understood first and foremost as a matter of democratic self-defense. From a democratic theory perspective, this provides a clear guideline for EU policy: regulatory measures should aim to curb the effects of digital technologies that undermine democracy. This implies shifting the focus from issues of safety, transparency, and fair competition to the enabling conditions of democracy. Indeed, I argue, this view lends support to a specific project of EU digital constitutionalism aimed at protecting the normative substance of the member states’ democratic constitutions.