Publications: Matthew Kilcoyne

The DMA’s forced interoperability undermines platform differentiation, weakens security and reliability, and ultimately leaves European consumers with degraded versions of global technologies.

Unfortunately, however complementary the objectives of protecting consumer privacy and promoting competition may be at a high level, complying with several key DMA prohibitions will undermine—not enhance—the privacy goals of the GDPR.

The EU’s move to bar major U.S. tech companies from participating in its new financial data-sharing framework (FiDA) is a protectionist proposal that would limit consumer choice, suppress innovation, and undermine FiDA’s potential benefits.

The collapse of a UK espionage case against alleged Chinese spies highlights Britain’s refusal to call China a security threat, exposing a dangerous weakness driven by economic dependence.

The UK Online Safety Act aims to protect children online but its vague rules and strict enforcement have led to over-censorship, threatening legitimate communities, and Parliament should clarify content definitions, allow remediation periods, and require judicial review to fix these issues.

The European Commission’s 2025 Strategic Foresight Report misframes the U.S. as a rival on par with China, risking transatlantic unity and protectionist policies that weaken Europe while leaving China free to dominate critical technologies.

European consumers report a decline in online experiences since the Digital Markets Act took effect, as regulatory restrictions on platform integration and data use have reduced functionality, slowed searches, and fragmented services across maps, travel, jobs, and more.

Europe’s pursuit of digital sovereignty rests on a flawed premise: that competing with the United States, rather than China, should be the central priority. To advance this goal, Brussels has embraced the so-called “Airbus model”—the belief that the government-led coordination that created an aerospace champion can be replicated to achieve dominance in semiconductors, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI). The idea is seductive and gaining traction, but the analogy is unproven and misguided.

Responding to a Financial Times Big Read article on whether Europe can “break free of American tech supremacy,” Matthew Kilcoyne writes that the question is misguided: European companies use American cloud, AI, and platforms because they deliver superior performance, productivity, and innovation.

In its push for digital sovereignty, the European Commission is reportedly planning to replace Microsoft Azure with the French cloud provider OVHcloud or another European alternative. But this move, while politically symbolic, would be costly. Far from enhancing security, this migration would sacrifice sound procurement and EU legal obligations in service of a hollow vision of digital nationalism.