EU moves to shut Big Tech out of Europe’s financial data

Banks win rare Brussels lobbying battle against Silicon Valley

The EU is poised to bar Meta, Apple, Google, and Amazon from accessing the bloc’s forthcoming open-finance rails under the Financial Data Access regulation—a system meant to let third parties, with consent, tap bank and insurer records to build new services. The ban would mark a sharp turn from early plans and comes despite President Donald Trump’s threats of tariffs over “discriminatory” digital rules.

What’s actually new

After two years of grinding negotiations, FiDA has entered the endgame with a clear political tilt: keep “gatekeepers” out. Diplomats now expect a final text this autumn that excludes the U.S. platforms from becoming licensed financial information service providers—an outcome that would hand Europe’s banks and insurers a strategic reprieve from platform competition. It’s a rare dossier where Big Tech’s lobbying firepower hasn’t carried the day.

FiDA extends “open banking” beyond payments to savings, credit, investments, pensions, and insurance, with standardized interfaces and explicit consumer control. But lawmakers hardened the draft as it moved from Commission proposal to Parliament and Council positions, adding tight guardrails on data categories and on who can hold a FiDA license. The Council’s general approach, agreed in December 2024, set the negotiating baseline for 2025.

The sovereignty turn

Berlin crystallized the new mood. Germany circulated language urging an explicit ban on Big Tech participation to “protect consumers’ digital sovereignty” and foster an EU-native ecosystem. That framing—sovereignty over pure competition—now dominates the file. Industry groups for insurers and banks amplified it, warning that handing hyperscalers financial telemetry would entrench data-driven dominance. Short version: keep the crown jewels in Europe.

Tech coalitions counter that the shift betrays FiDA’s consumer-choice roots. CCIA, whose members include several U.S. platforms, urged negotiators to drop any blanket gatekeeper ban, arguing it would curb innovation and deprive users of better tools. The fight is philosophical as much as economic: “data portability for people” versus “data leverage for platforms.”

Timelines and teeth

Expect a long rollout. Current drafts phase in data categories over years: simple deposits and consumer credit first, then mortgages and investments, with more complex insurance data last. Policymakers also built a scheme-based model to govern liability, compensation, and technical standards between data holders and data users. Translation: even with political momentum, execution will be slow and procedural.

Process matters here. Trilogues kicked off under Poland in March, continued through June, and are set to conclude under Denmark’s presidency. Negotiators report partial alignment but no white smoke yet—a reminder that the “ban Big Tech” headline still has to be rendered into operable, court-proof text.

The transatlantic angle

Washington sees protectionism. Trump has threatened “substantial” new tariffs for countries with digital taxes or rules he deems discriminatory, and aides have weighed sanctions against EU officials tied to tech legislation. Brussels shot back that its digital laws apply universally and noted recent enforcement hits on Chinese-owned platforms, not only American firms. Tensions will rise if FiDA codifies a category-based exclusion by design.

The risk is spillover. A Big Tech carve-out in finance sets a template others could copy—in payments, health, or identity. If Europe weaves sovereignty clauses into market-access regimes, expect reciprocal playbooks abroad. The result is a more Balkanized data economy.

Consumers vs. incumbents

Consumers may lose some convenience. Apple-grade UX and AI-powered insights are real strengths that many European banks struggle to match. But Europe’s regulators are prioritizing systemic risk and competition structure over near-term feature gains. They’ve watched platforms disintermediate media, retail, and ads; they won’t let finance be next without pre-conditions and limits.

Gatekeeper status will likely remain a scarlet letter. Parliament’s line bars designated gatekeepers from FiDA licensing outright and tightens scrutiny of any entity they own or control. Even if some access slips through, supervisory “special assessments” are designed to blunt data-network effects before they harden into moats. That’s the policy intent.

The precedent problem

Seen in isolation, FiDA looks like plumbing. In context, it’s industrial policy by other means. Brussels is building interoperable data rails, then deciding who gets to ride them—and under what constraints. That’s not a detour from Europe’s digital strategy. It is the strategy.

Why this matters:

• Regulatory template: A sector-specific carve-out of U.S. platforms—if finalized—gives the EU a repeatable model for future “sovereignty-first” data markets.
• Market structure: Banks get time to modernize on open rails without being outflanked by platform data moats, shifting competition toward UX and trust rather than raw scale.

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