France and Germany dominate the EU's tech regulation, rarely taking input from the bloc's smaller tech-oriented members, which worry about hampering innovation
it's in Central and Eastern Europe. It's time that these countries speak with one voice on the kind of digital decade they would like to see. https://www.politico.eu/... @e_estonia : “The problem in the #EU is that the countries making the tech rules aren't the ones leading on #tech,” writes @politico The future of #tech innovation isn't in France and Germany — it's in CEE and #Estonia is perfect example of how to do more with less." https://www.politico.eu/... Natasha / @riptari : Big Tech's latest bit of astroturfing on EU digital policy https://twitter.com/... [image] Michael Jackson / @workmj : “Europe's smaller but most tech-oriented members rarely feel heard in the halls of Brussels, even as they often disagree with the Commission's agenda.” The EU should let the Nordics and Baltics lead on tech...instead they have Germany and France instead. https://www.politico.eu/... Kirsten Rulf / @kirstenrulf : Very interesting and valid point of view from Northern and East Europe on #digital policy, #EU regulation and #innovation! #AIAct ➡️ On tech, the EU doesn't speak for Europe https://www.politico.eu/... Klon Kitchen / @klonkitchen : A very good read: “Europe's smaller but most tech-oriented members rarely feel heard in the halls of Brussels, even as they often disagree with the Commission's agenda.” https://www.politico.eu/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The EU has spent three years building its digital rulebook around a vision set at the top: the Commission's Digital Decade Principles defined the values framework, and landmark instruments like the Digital Markets Act were finalized largely on the big member states' terms, pushing even Big Tech from lobbying into pure compliance mode.
This Politico piece names the gap in that process — France and Germany drive the agenda while the bloc's most digitally advanced small states (Estonia, the Nordics, the Baltics, wider CEE) get little say, despite branding themselves as proof that innovation thrives 'doing more with less'. The critique lands against a backdrop of only four European companies among the world's top 50 tech firms, which makes the question of who writes the rules versus who builds the technology harder to ignore.
First-order effects
- Estonia and its Nordic, Baltic and CEE peers are pushed toward coordinating a joint position on the kind of digital decade they want, because individually their input into rules shaped by Paris and Berlin rarely registers.
- Rules locked in under Franco-German influence — instruments Big Tech has already stopped fighting and started complying with — harden before the smaller members' innovation concerns can reshape them.
Second-order effects
- Small-state dissent becomes contested terrain: the article itself drew accusations of astroturfing, showing how quickly CEE advocacy gets absorbed into Big Tech lobbying narratives rather than treated as an independent voice.
- A unified CEE-Nordic-Baltic front creates new pressure points inside Brussels that outside actors can work through — US lawmakers have already warned the White House that EU tech rules unfairly target American companies.
Third-order effects
- If rule-writing stays concentrated in two large-member-state capitals while commercial tech output sits elsewhere, the EU risks codifying incumbent priorities rather than producer needs — the structural backdrop to the continent's thin representation among global tech leaders.
- Excluding the bloc's most innovation-oriented members leaves the field to the largest states' regulatory preferences, deepening the transatlantic friction already visible in Washington's complaints about EU digital rules.
The trend: EU digital policymaking is consolidating around its largest member states while the bloc's most digitally advanced small countries organize collectively to contest who writes the rules of the Digital Decade.