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Europe seeks alignment with US on tech issues ahead of first trade council meeting

Europe is trying to find common ground with the US on issues such as AI, competition and taxation, EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said Tuesday at a conference.

The US and Europe may soon be more in sync on tech issues, with the first meeting of the newly formed US-EU Trade & Technology Council due to take place Wednesday in Pittsburgh. In the run-up to the meeting, Margrethe Vestager, the European Competition Commissioner and VP of the EU’s digital project, expressed her hopes for the two powers to find alignment in areas including competition, AI and taxation.

Vestager, who spoke Tuesday at Vox’s Code Conference in Los Angeles, has garnered a reputation for being tough on big tech. That’s largely due to the hefty antitrust fines she’s handed out to tech giants, in particular Google and Amazon, as well as a major tax spat with Apple. Former US President Donald Trump viewed her as an enemy of both America and technology, but she professes to be a fan of both and sees a shared purpose with her current counterparts in the US.

Her “mission,” she said Tuesday at the conference, is “to make sure that technology serves us, not only as consumers but also as citizens.”

In many respects, Vestager’s reputation has also been shaped by the fact Europe has pushed ahead of the US in terms of regulating big tech. The most prominent example of that is the introduction of the General Data Protection Regulation in 2018, which saw an overhaul of Europe’s privacy laws to make them better fit the digital age. One of the law’s hallmark features was meant to be steep fines for tech giants who misuse consumer data. The GDPR has been criticized for not resulting in enough large fines for big tech, as well as being the cause of the large number of privacy pop-ups in the browsers of European web users.

Vestager on Tuesday conceded that improvements were necessary in those regards, but she ultimately defended the legislation, pointing to the broader impact it’s had on the global conversation around citizen’s digital rights.

“The main success of GDPR, is that now privacy is a thing,” she said. “If we had not passed this kind of legislation, I think we would still be in the dark.”

Vestager also noted that since first working with the US, she’s observed a major shift in thinking on the part of lawmakers in the country about privacy. The US isn’t alone in this, she added. “It’s only a question of time before you see … real alignments between democracies on this planet — Europe, the US, India, Canada, Australia, Japan,” Vestager said. “Everyone is now coming on board.”

Seeking alignment with the US was a common thread running through Vestager’s session at Code, as she expressed her hope of finding common ground with her peers in Washington, DC. It’s no secret that Europe and the US struggled to work together during Trump’s presidency. Tensions over taxation caused the US to implement tariffs on a number of major goods exported by Europe as individual countries sought to tax big American tech companies on a more regional basis.

“There has been a complete turnaround with the change of administration, when it comes to saying, It’s important that you pay your taxes,” Vestager said. She added that she hoped that an international agreement was imminent, for corporate taxation and the distribution of taxing rights, “so that businesses pay taxes where they create their value.”

Equally, Vestager said she felt the US and EU were increasingly aligned on competition matters based on President Joe Biden’s July executive order. Biden’s plan for “Promoting Competition in the American Economy” ordered the Federal Trade Commission to bar unfair methods of competition on internet marketplaces. It also seeks to restore Obama-era net neutrality rules and calls for greater scrutiny of mergers, singling out “dominant internet platforms.”

“That kind of signaling is what is encouraging everyone who thinks that fair competition should be the rule in the marketplace,” Vestager said.

One additional priority area for Vestager to coordinate on with the US in Wednesday’s meeting is artificial intelligence. Consumers are most familiar with AI in the form of Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Assistant and Apple’s Siri, but AI goes beyond smart assistants. It can be used to digitally impersonate real people in the form of deepfakes and spread disinformation, but it’s also expected to transform the way we live.

“In order for that enormous potential to be unleashed, we need to be able to trust it,” Vestager said. This often hasn’t been the case, due to the number of instances in which the technology has been shown to hold bias, she added. “We need to move forward in democracies to change that, because otherwise, artificial intelligence will be turned against us.”

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Technologies

U.S. and Iran hold separate mediated talks as Middle East oil exports hit wartime peak

U.S. and Iranian officials have engaged in separate mediated talks aimed at ending the seven‑month war, while Middle East oil exports have surged to near‑record levels despite the conflict.

Iranian and American officials reportedly held separate meetings with mediators on Monday, urging a ceasefire.

Middle Eastern crude exports climbed this month to their highest point since the war started in February.

According to Kpler, a total U.S. export ban on diesel would keep about 1.2 million barrels per day domestically and could overwhelm Gulf Coast storage capacity.

The ruins of the Shajareh Tayebeh primary school, destroyed in Minab, Hormozgan province, are shown in an image taken on August 10 2026, surrounded by rubble. Six months later, AFP journalists gained rare access to the site, which remains largely in ruins, with collapsed walls and twisted steel framed by portraits of the children who were killed and Iranian flags waving above the debris. Iran asserts that the attack involved two separate U.S. Tomahawk missiles, though neither the United States nor Israel has officially claimed responsibility. (Photo by ATTA KENARE / AFP via Getty Images) / Atta Kenare | Afp | Getty Images

U.S. and Iranian officials have reportedly engaged in separate indirect talks with mediators on Monday, reviving efforts to end the seven‑month war. Tehran is pushing for a response to a revised ceasefire framework while Middle East crude exports reach their highest level since the conflict started.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi met Qatari mediators in New York, where he stayed after the United Nations General Assembly, and said he expects a reply from Washington by Tuesday. “We discussed ideas and how to find solutions to meet Iran’s conditions,” Araghchi said, adding that he plans to return to Tehran once a response arrives. “Whenever the Qataris have an answer, they know how to get it to us.”

Iran’s proposal, first presented on the sidelines of last week’s General Assembly, calls for the United States to release frozen Iranian funds within four to five days, lift sanctions on Iranian oil, and end the naval blockade of Iranian ports, with nuclear talks slated to begin within seven days. Tehran has linked any reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to the fulfillment of these steps.

President Donald Trump called the plan “unacceptable” on Sunday and rejected it, telling reporters that Iran seeks a rapid agreement because of the economic pressure it faces. At the White House on Monday, Trump said U.S. officials had spoken separately with mediators but offered no further details, adding, “We’re going to win. It’s going to go pretty quickly.”

The diplomatic push comes as physical supply data indicates the war’s impact on the oil market is easing. Middle Eastern crude exports rebounded this month to roughly their highest level since the conflict began in February, according to Kpler. The tracking firm noted that Middle East crude exports are at just under 80 % of pre‑conflict levels.

The Strait of Hormuz itself remains far from normal. Kpler’s real‑time tracking showed total traffic through the strait at 10,591 kilobarrels per day on Saturday, compared with a pre‑war baseline of 17,133.

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Technologies

Oil prices fall as crude exports recover at Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea ports

Saudi Arabia has restored flows through the pipeline to around 3.5 million barrels per day, according to media reports.

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