A top ally of French President Emmanuel Macron gloated that the European Union is treating fines on US tech giants like a piggy bank to bankroll the bloc’s own spending — a brazen disclosure the White House likened to “extortion.”
France’s Europe Minister Benjamin Haddad suggested Tuesday that the EU, the self-styled free trade club of 27 nations, use billions squeezed out of firms like Google as “a new revenue stream” to slash membership fees and help fund its lavish outgoings.
He bragged on live TV that the 4.6 billion euro, or $5.2 billion, cash grab extracted from the search giant serves as a handy “windfall” for EU governments as they look to agree a massive new 2 trillion euro, seven-year spending plan.
“This is a new revenue stream for the European Union — 4.6 billion euros — that should automatically lower the contributions of all member states,” Haddad told public broadcaster France Info, referring to the yearly fees each of the 27 countries pay to a central budget in Brussels to fund shared goals.
“This is a discussion we have with the European Union every single time, precisely to keep member states’ contributions under control,” the French MP added. “Therefore, this 4.6 billion-euro windfall tied to the Google fine is good news for the member states as well.”
Google was hit with the fine, for breaking antitrust rules, in 2018. It only officially paid up in July after losing its final appeal in a years-long legal battle over its Android operating system.
With the EU already slapping Google with a staggering 10.38 billion-euro, or $11.7 billion, in penalties over the years, Haddad’s comments appeared to offer an extraordinary confirmation of what US critics have long suspected — Europe’s regulatory crusade is less about fair play and more about raiding US corporate coffers to line its own pockets.
The White House slammed the rip-off.
“President Trump has unequivocally warned trading partners against imposing digital services taxes, fines, and other forms of extortion on America’s leading technology sector. The administration remains committed to raising these issues with our trading partners,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a Tuesday statement.
The relentless battering meted out by EU regulators against US tech firms has long been a bugbear for the commander-in-chief.
Ahead of the G7 summit in France in June, the onetime real estate mogul threatened in an exclusive interview with The Post to hit French wines and champagnes with a 100% tariff unless France drops its own digital tax on US tech giants. Both sides reached an agreement to resolve the matter last month, according to Macron.
The EU’s clash with Google is just one front in a decades-long regulatory siege by Brussels against American tech titans, generating tens of billions of dollars in penalties over antitrust, privacy, and tax practices.
In 2024, Apple lost a landmark eight-year legal battle that saw the European Court of Justice force the iPhone maker to cough up 13 billion euros, or $14.4 billion in alleged illegal tax breaks to Ireland.
That same year, Eurocrats whacked Apple again — this time with a 1.8 billion euro, or $2 billion, antitrust penalty — for supposedly stopping rival music streaming services, including Spotify, from pointing users to cheaper subscription deals outside the App Store.
Facebook parent Meta has been caught in the same crosshairs under the bloc’s draconian General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR.
Any firm operating on the internet that touches a European user’s data must comply with EU privacy rules or face ruinous fines of up to 4% of its entire global annual turnover.
European privacy watchdogs slapped Meta with a staggering 1.2 billion euro, or $1.3 billion, fine in 2023 over transatlantic user data transfers, claiming the data wasn’t safe from US surveillance.
Mark Zuckerberg’s social media giant also remains locked in a bitter dispute with Brussels over its “pay or consent” subscription model.
The transatlantic battles have only escalated following the rollout of the EU’s landmark Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act (DSA) — sprawling new tech laws that have cemented the bloc’s reputation as Silicon Valley’s chief tormentor.
In December 2025, the European Commission made Elon Musk’s X its first victim under the DSA, hitting the platform with a 120 million euro, or $136 million, penalty.
The sweeping law forces massive platforms like X, TikTok, and Meta to actively scrub what bureaucrats deem “illegal” content, hate speech, and disinformation.
Brussels essentially accused X of tricking users with its blue checkmark system, slacking on ad transparency, and stonewalling researchers trying to snoop on public data.