US pressure strips partners' logos from the EU Disinfo Lab conference

Washington objected to one panel, and a European conference on disinformation lost partners' logos. As Agenda Digitale reports, US pressure led to the removal of the logos of partners including Canada, Lithuania and the EEAS from the EU Disinfo Lab conference. The panel had framed America as a FIMI threat.

The logos are a small thing. What removed them is not. If one panel naming the United States is enough to take partners off a European conference's materials, the open question is no longer what counts as disinformation but who is allowed to say so. Counter-disinformation work that holds only when it points at someone else is not independent. It is selective.

Vittorio Colao made a different kind of defence, as The Next Web reports. He called the Digital Services Act and Europe's copyright rules pillars of digital democracy and of protection for creators. In the same argument he acknowledged that EU regulation, the GDPR and the AI Act among it, is hindering AI development, and he urged a nuanced approach. The split is useful: it puts the rules that hold platforms to account on one side and the rules that slow down builders on the other.

"Nuanced" becomes a position only when someone names the clause that should change.

Businesses…

Jean-Christophe Laloux, the incoming chief of the European Investment Fund, wants European startups to scale at home and calls it a matter of sovereignty, as The Next Web reports. His evidence is the European Tech Champions Initiative. The funds it backs hold 15 European unicorns, and the stated purpose of the money is to let companies grow without leaving the continent.

Heise supplies the other side of the ledger. Apple has acquired intellectual property and employees from Huxe, a German AI startup founded by former creators of Google's NotebookLM, and disclosed the deal to the European Commission under the Digital Markets Act. Apple took the assets and the people. A unicorn count measures what stays in Europe. It has no column for what leaves this way, and that column is where European digital sovereignty is lost one team at a time.

Government…

Finnish regulators have stopped Google from preparing a data centre site ahead of the environmental impact assessment, as Xataka reports. The preparation meant clearing nearly 530 hectares of forest. The assessment comes first, and a hyperscaler's timetable does not change the order. That is the whole point of having one.

Further today

• China's raw material dominance: Why Brussels' billion-euro offensive is faltering · Heise Online

Sources

• US pressure led to the removal of partners' logos, including Canada, Lithuania and the EEAS, from the EU Disinfo Lab conference over a panel framing America as a FIMI threat · Agenda Digitale
• Vittorio Colao defended the DSA and EU copyright rules and acknowledged that EU regulation is hindering AI development · The Next Web
• The EIF's incoming chief says the European Tech Champions Initiative backs funds holding 15 European unicorns · The Next Web
• Apple acquired intellectual property and employees from Huxe and disclosed it to the Commission under the DMA · Heise Online
• Finnish regulators halted Google's data centre site preparation ahead of the environmental impact assessment · Xataka