Sir Nick Clegg on Big Tech and Europe's ‘strategic miscalculation’

Few leaders are as well-equipped to bridge the gulf between Silicon Valley and European policymakers as Sir Nick Clegg, former British Deputy Prime Minister and, until early 2025, Meta’s President of Global Affairs. Fresh from seven years in the upper echelons of Zuckerberg’s behemoth, BIG welcomed him on 6 November for the exclusive Brussels launch event of his new book, How to Save the Internet: The Threat to Global Connection in the Age of AI and Political Conflict. 

As the EU struggles to balance regulation, innovation and competitiveness in the face of American and Chinese technological dominance, Sir Nick’s message for the ‘Brussels bubble’ was stark: the approach of the European institutions is fundamentally flawed. Specifically, he argued that the EU’s regulatory zeal – without accompanying measures to support home-grown digital prowess – represents ‘an absolutely catastrophic strategic miscalculation’. 

‘Almost all the political energy has gone into trying to clip the wings of non-European companies, rather than foster large-scale European companies, and that fundamental error [...] is spectacularly self-harming.’ 

Describing the digital single market as a ‘fiction’, and bemoaning the lack of a capital markets union, he warned that Europe risked profound damage and loss of strategic influence if it fails to create the conditions for digital industries to thrive – compounding a structural economic stagnation already in evidence. 

‘Unless you're strong at home, you can't project power abroad. Power has to be driven by your own vitality in your own neck of the woods. The loss of economic vitality on our continent over the last decade and a half, particularly compared to the US, is almost without precedent in the last century or so.’ 

Mr Clegg continues to see a space for Europe at the top table of technological policymaking, suggesting a ‘deliberate act of political will’ between ‘techno-democracies’ will be required to ensure the fundamental openness of the internet in the face of competing models from China and elsewhere. However, he warned that the political ‘de-globalisation’ Europe is witnessing in the form of nationalist and Eurosceptic movements places the continent’s fragile influence in even greater jeopardy. 

‘We are either going to learn to become the sum of our parts and to develop the scale of the sum of our parts, or we will be an increasingly herbivorous animal preyed upon by carnivorous powers outside Europe. And that's part of the problem with the culture [in EU policymaking]. It's a sort of herbivorous, legalistic multilateralism that just doesn't cut any ice when you're dealing with the power politics between China and the US. We're not equipped for this game.’ 

Joining the conversation was Eva Maydell MEP, who – offering a counterpoint from the EU policymaking perspective – argued that expectations of accountability from social media platforms were commensurate with their vast influence. 

‘I don't think we fully grasp it in Brussels, but the future of the internet is power. It's not just about technology. And we talk often about lines of code or certain platforms, but we talk so much less about that power that it possesses, who holds it, who shapes it and who benefits from it. And I think that those that set the rules for the digital world are setting the rules for the next economy. [...] And this is where the European approach comes in: we believe that accountability matters to a certain extent.’ 

Ms Maydell talked of the need for a new ‘social contract’ between technology and society, suggesting that the role of policymakers is to ensure that social media ‘serves democracy rather than destabilising it’. On this note, she advocated for value-based international partnerships to ensure Europe’s positions on tech regulation form part of a cohesive global effort, rather than the EU standing alone and risking its geopolitical relevance in this emergent power struggle.