This article is an opinion piece whose contents represent the standpoint of its author and not UPF Lund or The Perspective’s editorial board.
In December 2025, the EU Commission opened an antitrust inquiry over Google’s AI search summaries. Afterwards, the Trump administration briefly threatened to restrict major European companies’ access to the US market. Potential targets were explicitly named. The list included globally operating enterprises like Spotify and SAP, DHL and Siemens, alongside smaller companies, like Mistral AI, which could become competitors to US firms.
With this move, Trump wants to influence the processes of the EU’s legal system through the usage of economic pressure. The appeal of this strategy rests in part on the EU’s reluctance to strongly answer previous geoeconomic confrontations. In this regard, the Union has been accused of “always chickening out”. However, it possesses tools it could use to counter such moves.
Unknown to most, yet very powerful, is the Anti-Coercion Instrument (ACI) which allows the EU to swiftly counter economic coercion.
The ACI was initially established as a response to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) using economic coercion when a “Taiwan Representative Office” opened in Lithuania. In this historic example, the PRC blocked all bilateral trade between the two countries overnight. When the Lithuanian government did not change its stance, the PRC stated that companies using Lithuanian products might themselves be restricted from access to the Chinese market. Those were de-facto secondary sanctions, though all action from the Chinese side was informal. No sanctions were officially imposed.
As a response, the EU as a whole filed a complaint with the World Trade Organisation, while some German companies pressured the Lithuanian government to de-escalate. In the aftermath, there was agreement that a situation like that should not repeat itself. A tool, now called ACI, to counteract coercive action was called for.
Today, the US, as Europe’s closest ally for decades, increasingly shows adverse behaviour. The most recent development of utmost concern is the United States’ persistent interest in the acquisition of Greenland. European countries standing by Denmark and Greenland in defense of their sovereignty – the very fundamental norm of the international order – faced additional tariffs of up to 25% until Trump backpedaled in Davos.
With that, multiple Member States and the EU itself are exposed to a foreign power using economic threats in order to try pushing them towards a favoured stance; a situation quite similar to Lithuania’s a few years ago.
The Anti-Coercion Instrument allows the Commission to take swift action when “a third country [a country outside of the EU] applies or threatens to apply a measure” to interfere “in the legitimate sovereign choices of the Union or a Member State”. Once the Commission has deemed that economic coercion is being exerted, it can adopt a broad set of more detailed implementing acts without lengthy discussions.
Before adopting these implementing acts, the Commission must secure a qualified majority (at least 55% of Member States and 65% of total population) upon examination by the Member States. Importantly, no unanimous vote is needed. This means that counter-measures could technically be agreed on rather easily.
In choosing reactions, the Commission has a broad set of possibilities: from light sanctions to far-reaching import and export restrictions on goods and services, intellectual property rights and limits to foreign direct investment.
Because of this tool’s potency, it has been dubbed the “trade bazooka”. It was originally thought up as a form of deterrence. This is likely the reason why many in the EU’s Member States and Institutions have so far been reluctant to make use of it. However, it needs in no way to be the “nuclear option”. It can and certainly should be used to proportionately answer threats instead of blatantly escalating a conflict.
In face of the Greenland-related tariff threat however, Macron and later other politicians made moves towards using the ACI. Though with Trump withdrawing his threat, the search for a majority on this is not urgently needed anymore. But the topic has been raised, which sets a precedent for future crisis meetings in Brussels.
This time Europe stood fast. It did not chicken out.
However, in a world where economic interdependence is increasingly weaponised, the EU has to adjust its ways. The Union has enabled itself to effectively counter economic force used by allies and adversaries. So, when third countries try to force the Commission or Member States’ governments to deviate from procedures rooted in the rule of law, the principle of self-determination facilitates the irrefutable necessity to respond to this with an answer that cannot be challenged.
The Union must have the confidence and foresight to show and utilise the economic power it possesses. A proportional reaction is needed to secure the Union’s long-term interest, even if that means short-term losses and even if Member States’ national economies would be affected unequally. European solidarity in this context means that defending the collective’s sovereignty must be of a superior value.
European leaders need to take responsibility and look beyond the next opinion poll, the next fiscal report, the next election, and operate in the Union’s long-term interest. The ACI must be used if coercion is applied. Otherwise, it will be just another example of Europe silencing itself.
We need no Union that struggles to find common policies in face of danger.
We need a Union to defend our collective autonomy with the tools that already are at our hands
By Leon Hück
February 6, 2026
