Washington went to court this week to argue that Brussels cannot fine an American platform it says does not operate in Europe. The same week, Ireland fined Google for location tracking that ended in 2020, and the Commission launched a pact to bring pension money into European scaleups.
The thread is who sets the terms. Enforcement is slow and now contested from abroad, and the capital meant to keep Europe's companies at home is still being assembled while Monzo talks to a Brazilian buyer and Nscale prepares to list in New York.
Policy & Regulation
Washington asks to join X's case against the DSA fine
The US Justice Department applied on 24 September to intervene in two General Court cases, T-114/26 and T-121/26, in which X and Elon Musk seek to annul the Commission's EUR 120 million fine from December 2025. That fine, the first under the Digital Services Act, covered deceptive blue checkmarks, an incomplete ad repository, and blocked researcher access to data.
The US argument goes further than X's own. It says the Commission reached companies "not present or operating within its jurisdiction", stretched the definition of a provider, and pulled Musk and unrelated entities he owns into the liability.
Commission spokesperson Thomas Regnier said the EU is "ready to defend our position in court" and that "nothing will change because of a DSA case" in wider trade talks. The court now has to rule on how far the DSA reaches, with a foreign government arguing the other side.
(US Department of Justice; CNBC)
Ireland fines Google EUR 403 million for tracking that stopped in 2020
The Data Protection Commission fined Google on 21 September over location data collected through Web & App Activity and Location History: unlawful and unfair processing, poor transparency, and data kept too long. The infringement period runs from May 2018 to February 2020, and the inquiry opened in February 2020 after complaints from consumer groups including BEUC.
Six and a half years from complaint to decision is the enforcement gap in one number. Google has six months to bring its processing into line.
The same day, the European Data Protection Board adopted a five-step method for deciding when an infringement deserves a fine rather than a reprimand, open for comment until 13 November. It addresses consistency between regulators; the speed problem this Google case exposes is not in it.
Ministers want Chips Act 2.0 to pick niches
At the Competitiveness Council on 24 September, ministers held their first policy debate on the Chips Act 2.0 tabled on 3 June. Delegations named the segments they want prioritised: power semiconductors, photonics, quantum, advanced packaging, chip design, mature technologies, and advanced materials.
Ireland's enterprise minister Peter Burke, who chaired the meeting, said "Europe cannot afford to be just a customer."
The list says more than the quote. Member states are steering the second Chips Act toward segments where European firms already sell, rather than leading-edge fabs.
No conclusions were adopted. EU Inc, whose 100-day countdown we covered on 14 September, appeared on the same agenda only as an information point.
(Irish Presidency of the Council)
Capital & Investment
Brussels builds a front door for pension money
The Commission and the EIB Group launched the European Institutional Investors Pact on 22 September. Thirteen institutional investors have signed up so far, with the stated aim of investing in scaleups through the EUR 15 billion European Tech Champions Initiative 2.0 and the EUR 5 billion Scaleup Europe Fund.
The pact is voluntary and has two parts: a Commission-led forum on the rules that shape institutional investment, and an EIB platform offering deal pipeline and market data. ETCI 2.0 aims to mobilise up to EUR 80 billion; the first edition backed 15 funds and 47 scaleups.
The release does not name the thirteen investors, and their commitments are intentions, not allocations. "What many companies still lack is access to sufficient late-stage capital," said startups commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva, and the next two items show what happens in the meantime.
(EIB)
Monzo weighs a sale to Nubank instead of a listing
Monzo is in early talks with Brazil's Nubank over a takeover that could value it at GBP 8 billion to 10 billion, Sky News reported on 26 September. Monzo has hired Morgan Stanley and Qatalyst, and the alternative on the table is a new funding round above GBP 8 billion.
Nubank, listed in New York and worth about $65.5 billion, would gain a UK banking licence and 16 million customers. Revolut said last week it wants New York alongside London; Monzo may not list at all.
(City AM)
Nscale's first big customer was ByteDance
The London AI infrastructure company is targeting a $35 billion valuation in a New York listing. The Financial Times found that ByteDance's Singapore subsidiary supplied nearly 75% of its $33 million 2025 revenue, a customer the prospectus never names.
ByteDance rented 2,304 Nvidia B200 GPUs at Nscale's Glomfjord site in Norway, a legal route around US export controls on sales to China. Its share fell to 52% in the first half of 2026, and contracts with Microsoft and Anthropic worth more than $40 billion each should take it below 20%.
We covered Nscale's $900 million debt raise in July. The listing now tests how much investors care who paid the bills in year one.
(TNW)
DTCP's defence fund draws Danish and Estonian public money
DTCP closed its first defence fund at EUR 455 million on 24 September, backed by Deutsche Telekom, Porsche SE, Denmark's state investment fund EIFO, the Danish pension fund Danica, and Estonia's state venture fund SmartCap. It writes Series B and later cheques in AI and autonomy, cyber defence, secure communications, and space, and has already backed Six Robotics and Kraken Technology Group.
Three of the five named backers are public or pension money, the kind of institutional capital the pact above is trying to attract. In defence it is already arriving, and DTCP opens a Copenhagen office in 2027 to follow it.
(Tech.eu)
Work & Society
German regulators tell smart-glasses wearers the recording is on them
Germany's Data Protection Conference, the joint body of federal and state authorities, said on 24 September that people wearing camera glasses such as Meta's Ray-Ban model are themselves responsible under GDPR for what they record. The household exemption does not cover filming strangers in public, and a small LED on the frame is not enough notice.
The authorities added that using the footage to train a manufacturer's AI usually has no legal basis. They asked legislators for rules on camera glasses in public space, which puts the question to Berlin and Brussels before the devices become common.
One to Watch
MEPs reopen AI liability, a year after the Commission dropped it
Four MEPs backed by the EPP, S&D, and Renew are preparing a push to extend EU product liability rules to general-purpose and frontier models, according to Politico. The Commission withdrew its AI Liability Directive in October 2025, after the internal market committee called it premature.
The revised Product Liability Directive covers defective software, but the MEPs argue it misses harm from models that behave in ways nobody designed. Watch whether the Commission takes it up before the frontier lab meeting von der Leyen promised in the State of the Union, which two weeks on still has no date.