Brussels is in close touch with Berlin on the probe, which it believes could be a blueprint for other possible U.S. trade investigations into France and Italy’s pharmaceutical policies. Ditte Juul Jørgensen, head of the Commission’s trade department, recently met with German officials in Berlin to focus on a way forward on drug pricing.
The Commission has adopted a similar strategy on transatlantic disagreements on digital policy.
While the Trump administration has pressed for broader talks, including on the enforcement of the EU’s competition rules governing Big Tech platforms, Brussels has taken pains to keep the discussions at a technical level.
In early July, a group of officials from the European Commission’s trade and tech departments headed to Washington for what a Commission spokesperson described as “a dialogue on the dialogue.”
A senior Commission official said the meeting was about seeing where the two sides could “partner up,” with Brussels looking at holding a “high-level” meeting with Washington in the fall and a series of technical rounds in between.
“From the EU’s perspective, both sort of genetically as an organization and tactically, they would be happy if as many of the discussions as possible moved to the technical level in dialogue committees rather than have it be, like, Donald Trump and somebody going at it on Twitter or in competing press statements,” said Dmitry Grozoubinski, a former trade diplomat for the Australian government and the founder of ExplainTrade, an outlet based in Geneva.
The Commission responded with characteristic restraint after Trump threatened retaliation over the latest Google fine. After the U.S. president’s Truth Social post, Brussels emphasized it would seek “technical-level contact” between the EU and the U.S., said deputy chief spokesperson Olof Gill. A meeting at a higher, political level hasn’t yet been confirmed.
However, several people familiar with the matter confirmed they were expecting a reaction from the U.S., possibly in the form of a new 301 investigation.
