Political storm in Brussels. Several media outlets have been reporting for weeks that Google was going to receive a fine for violating the Digital Markets Regulation (DMA). There was talk of a penalty of “billions of euros” which in principle would be announced throughout the month of March. It’s already May and there has been no news on the subject. What has happened?
According to the prestigious German newspaper Handelsblattit was the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who would have personally intervened on this file… stopping it. The German newspaper assures that this decision would have been adopted to avoid tensions and a new trade escalation with the Trump Administrationwhich has already come out in defense of big technology companies in the past.
If so, it wouldn’t even have had any effect: Washington now wants to increase tariffs on European cars to 25% alleging that the European Union is not honoring the trade agreement that was signed last summer. For its part, the Old Continent limits itself to defending that an agreement is an agreement. Some analysts are already calling for more courage from Brussels: it is unlikely that Trump will dare to start another trade war with the midterm elections on the horizon.
About thirty organizations demand that Von der Leyen not be intimidated
But now there are already a dozen social organizations that have demanded more of that audacity by letter from Von der Leyen, demanding that the sanction on Google that was being talked about be imposed now. “The Commission was apparently planning to impose the largest fine to date under the WFD, worth several billion euros, scheduled for March 2026. It is alleged that you personally decided to postpone these sanctions“, highlights the letter.
“If true, this would mean a new blow to European innovation, prosperity, democracy and sovereignty,” he continues. “The EU’s inability to effectively curb the market dominance of Big Tech has already caused significant damage to European innovators and SMEs, degraded our information environment and strengthened our.”
The letter is signed by organizations such as LobbyControl, an organization dedicated to monitoring the activity of lobbyists in Brussels, or the European Federation of Journalists and Reporters Without Borders. The only organization based in Spain that signs this letter addressed to the president of the European Commission is Xnet, an entity that presents itself as an “institute for democratic digitalization.”
In fact, the organizations remind Von der Leyen that this “withdrawal” comes at a time of “continued pressure from the Trump Administration” which has “explicitly threatened” with “tariffs, sanctions and other forms of coercion” should the European Union decide to enforce its digital regulations or impose fines against American technology companies. “In April 2025 you defended that these regulations are sovereign decisions that are not negotiated,” they remind Von der Leyen.
“The decision to park the fine against Google, if confirmed, would go against that commitment and would encourage the US Administration to demand new concessions,” the letter states, “which is why we ask you to confirm that the Digital Markets Regulation will apply free from political interference and ensure that the fine against Google will be imposed without further delay.”
What was Google accused of?
The decision has not been officially communicated because, according to the German press, Von der Leyen would have intervened. What has emerged is what the search engine giant was going to be accused of. The file had been in preparation for months: Brussels would have identified that Google is favoring its own services (like Google Shopping) against other competitors in your search results.
The maneuvers by which Google would also be preventing the developers of the apps offered on Google Play from introducing their own payment channels, without depending on the gateways offered by the technology (and through which it perceives 30% of any payment that is done within its ecosystem).
It would not be the first time that the EU investigates Google for these precepts: before the Digital Markets Regulation existed, Brussels has already imposed large fines of millions of euros on Google invoking the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) for abuse of a dominant position. For her part, Von der Leyen is also aware of what is at stake: after it was announced last year a fine on Elon Musk’s XTrump intervened with more threats to the Old Continent.
