From bottle caps to the AI Act: Why is European regulation causing a stir across the Atlantic?

Who hasn’t wondered at least once about the origin of those new plastic bottle caps — now permanently attached to the bottles themselves? After a few weeks or months getting used to this new system, opinions seem to have largely accepted, even embraced, the change. One question remained: what could have convinced all bottle manufacturers to converge on such a system?

A little research reveals that this stems from the implementation of the AGEC Act (Anti-Waste Act for a Circular Economy) of 10 February 2020. It mandates tethered caps for plastic bottles under 3 litres from 3 July 2024, a date aligned with the deadline of European directive 2019/904 (the “Single-Use Plastics” directive, or SUP). This is the same law that banned other items (straws, cutlery, stirrers) as early as July 2021 — a reform that is now broadly popular in France, even as events in the United States remind us that a divergence of views already exists.

This is a striking example of a European regulatory act influencing the production and circulation of products in our market. By embedding a technical specification directly into product design, the legislator pursues a “monumental goal” that transcends market logic — here, environmental protection — while preserving the free competition that drives Europe. To pre-empt the critics: regulation did not stifle innovation; it redirected and stimulated it for reasons that go beyond the strictly economic. The complementarity is ultimately quite logical: where innovation lives solely through and for the market to which it is intrinsically tied (see in particular the article “How tech companies are forcing us to use AI”), the legislator steps in as a regulator — whether to curb market deviations or to pursue progress.

The Brussels Effect and “monumental goals”

This phenomenon has been theorised by Professor Anu Bradford under the name of the “Brussels Effect“. She demonstrates how this regulatory power, sometimes perceived as a local constraint, becomes a lever for global progress through an industrial knock-on effect. The notion of regulation is now well documented, and it is impossible not to mention the writings of Marie-Anne Frison-Roche, who analyses like no other the shift from “ex-post” to “ex-ante”: we are no longer merely in a body of law that punishes after the fact, but in a law of compliance that requires companies upstream to pursue “monumental goals”. The GDPR is certainly the most precursor and symptomatic regulation in this respect, and today it enjoys relatively broad acceptance, with above all a culture of compliance that has developed within companies.

By regulating the circulation of products (and the commercialisation of services) on a market of more than 450 million consumers, Europe is raising global standards. The (compelling) idea is that this European norm is then adopted worldwide by sheer economic pragmatism: the additional cost of creating a Europe-specific production line is often far greater than the cost of extending the standard to the rest of the world.

This is not simply utopian: even if our market is not the largest by volume, it remains indispensable (ranking 2nd or 3rd all the same) and is governed by a stable legislator. Added to this, the stability of European regulatory power — sorely tested by a turbulent geopolitical climate — remains a powerful argument for generalisation for companies that need to be able to plan ahead. By combining significant volume with a highly predictable and long-lasting normative framework, Europe provides the guarantees and security that are crucial for companies seeking to minimise costly uncertainties. Starting from the premise that companies are by definition neutral and guided by their own interests, the regulation of the European market is one of the EU’s real levers for ensuring that products (including digital ones) are as ethical, secure, interoperable and environmentally responsible as possible.

Sovereignty through market design

When Europe mandates tethered caps, it forces companies to solve engineering problems they would otherwise have ignored. The same logic applies to the generalisation of USB-C ports (directive 2022/2380), which combats planned obsolescence and promotes interoperability. For those who remember the era of zero compatibility between chargers, it is a real relief today to know that the trend is towards simplification.

Unsurprisingly, Open Source and standardisation go hand in hand with this vision. To free up markets, standards must be open standards (see the article on Linux migration). By mandating interoperability of messaging services under the DMA (Digital Markets Act), Europe breaks anticompetitive practices and lock-in strategies favoured by monopolistic players. By asserting the sovereignty of law over technical infrastructure, Europe liberates the market and opens the door to plural innovation.

This phenomenon now extends to the heart of the digital world with the GDPR, the AI Act, and the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA — see also our guide on the Cyber Resilience Act). Services “secure by design” thanks to the CRA, or “ethical” thanks to the AI Act, will ultimately benefit users the world over, regardless of whether their own country regulates these technologies. More than that, Europe is now fully aware that its digital strategy must rest on a resilient and inclusive open ecosystem (see the consultation currently open for the ecosystem ahead of the Commission’s next Open Source strategy). It also relies on a finely orchestrated division of roles and a genuine European policy (see in particular the reflections on the Public Digital Infrastructure and, more recently, the work under way at European level around the EDIC Digital Commons European Digital Infrastructure).

Here again, it is impossible not to refer to the reflections at the heart of Marie-Anne Frison-Roche’s work, notably in her books Les buts monumentaux de la Compliance (2022) and L’Apport de la Compliance à la Gouvernance d’Internet (2019). Europe transforms companies into agents of implementation for the common good, towards a more open and inclusive approach that we also champion at inno³ (see also the forthcoming publication of the synthesis of the Commons AI event).

From non-tariff barriers to future standards

The feverish current climate, marked by President Trump’s criticism of a Europe he deems “decadent”, highlights the prevailing schizophrenia. If it is difficult for a company to admit to its users that it wants less regulation in order to prioritise revenues over their security, it is easier to frame this as a foreign policy issue. Political discourse often masks the real question: are companies willing to reduce their profits, or even degrade the quality and ethics of their services depending on the territory, in order to protect their margins? Whatever the discourse, all countries seem to agree on the idea of a market as a means (not an end) capable of serving their ambitions, but the divergence on those ambitions appears profound. This is the point at which we speak of extraterritorial laws (or even interference): when a country decides that its normative power extends beyond its territory — whether by condemning or sanctioning individuals or organisations for actions taken in another country, coming to the aid of its own companies to secure a presence in a foreign country for obvious geopolitical reasons, and so on.

The most complex challenge — and this is clearly where Europe aims to set an example — is to regulate in a balanced way and for ends that are genuinely justifiable at the international level (security, free competition, ethics, etc.). Companies (not only in the digital sector) operating in China have long accepted isolating their markets to comply with far more intrusive regulations (and ones sufficiently incompatible with the expectations of other markets that those markets remain separate). Barriers are not only tariff-based, and the study of Japanese history is equally fascinating — with the example of Kei Cars (or, more marginally, PDC phones) — following a similar path to that being explored in France and Europe for intermediate vehicles.

Conclusions

This is a time for strategy: Europe must preserve open ecosystems, free competition and our societal goals. The aim is not to fall into the “Galápagos Syndrome“, but to play our normative card to the full. The work done by Europe to strengthen a virtuous Open Source ecosystem is a major lever here. Even if the CRA experience has shown this is no smooth ride, the trend is clearly favourable to community-driven Open Source dynamics (see also our 2025 retrospective).

This is clear: regulation depends on the values that inform sovereign power. Faced with a digital market where our industry players are still searching for strategic tools, our capacity to regulate is paramount. Unlike some partners such as Canada, which has recently agreed to deregulate without anything in return, Europe is holding its course.

All of these reflections are still somewhat effervescent, but they lay out many ideas that need to be finely articulated for the transformation to work. They point to other related concepts such as the principle of exhaustion (national or international), other limits on intellectual property rights, as well as European Open Source policy (evolving rapidly) and the challenge of thinking about innovation in terms of a virtuous circle.