European Union on CrossGov.com

US Government Takes Equity Stakes in Critical Minerals Companies: How Washington's Approach Compares With China and the EU

Sun, 11 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In July 2025 the Pentagon became a major shareholder in the company that runs America’s only operating rare earth mine. The Defense Department bought $400 million of MP Materials preferred stock at $30.03 a share, with warrants, added a $150 million loan, and promised two things a market investor never would: a ten-year price floor of $110 per kilogram for the company’s neodymium-praseodymium oxide, and a ten-year commitment to buy all the output of a new magnet plant.

FedRAMP 20x Reaches 538 Certified Cloud Services on a $10 Million Budget, While Europe Still Has No Common Cloud Certification

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

FedRAMP is the US government’s security approval for cloud services. If a federal agency wants to run its work on someone’s cloud, the service generally needs FedRAMP clearance first. In fiscal 2026, which ended on 30 September, the programme issued 92 new certifications, bringing the total to 538 cloud offerings. Agencies issued 760 new authorisations to use them.

It did that with 17 federal employees, 15 contractors and a budget of $10 million, of which it spent just under $9 million.

US Russia Sanctions Move in Both Directions as the EU's 22nd Package and Britain's 600 Tankers Carry the Load

Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The United States imposed its toughest Russia sanctions in October 2025, when it designated Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil companies. Those designations stand. Since then Washington has moved in both directions. In 2026 it removed several names from its lists, issued licences letting already-loaded Russian oil cargoes be delivered and kept extending the deadline for Lukoil to sell its foreign assets. On 1 October it designated A7, a Russia-linked payments network used to evade sanctions, under its Iran and criminal-network authorities.

Supreme Court Strikes Down IEEPA Tariffs: $122 Billion in Refunds and the Section 301 and 232 Tariffs That Replaced Them

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 20 February 2026 the Supreme Court ruled 6 to 3 that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act doesn’t give the President the power to impose tariffs. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in Learning Resources v. Trump, decided together with V.O.S. Selections. Justices Kavanaugh, Thomas and Alito dissented.

The ruling knocked out the legal basis for most of the tariffs imposed since early 2025. Customs and Border Protection stopped collecting them on 24 February. By then it had taken in about $166 billion from more than 330,000 importers.

DOE's LNG Export Approvals Pass 18.6 Bcf a Day as US Supplies a Quarter of the World Market and the EU's $750 Billion Pledge Lags

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Department of Energy has approved more than 18.6 billion cubic feet a day of new liquefied natural gas exports to countries without a US free trade agreement since January 2025, according to its own tally in March 2026. That’s more new export capacity than any administration has authorised in a comparable period.

The approvals followed the end of a pause. In January 2024 the Biden administration had stopped new non-FTA export approvals while DOE studied their economic and climate effects. The new administration lifted the pause on 20 January 2025.

GSA OneGov AI Deals Move Past $1 Pricing as Federal Procurement Consolidates and the FAR Is Rewritten

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In August 2025 three AI companies offered the US government their enterprise products for almost nothing. OpenAI put ChatGPT Enterprise on the table at $1 per agency for a year. Anthropic offered Claude for $1 across all three branches of government. Google came in at 47 cents for Gemini. All three went through OneGov, a programme the General Services Administration launched in April 2025 to negotiate governmentwide deals directly with big software makers.

US Tax Take Stays at 25.6% of GDP as the OECD Average Hits a Record 34.1%, and Pillar Two Carves Out US Companies

Wed, 07 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The United States collected 25.6% of its GDP in taxes in 2024, unchanged from 2023 and down from 28.0% in 2022. The average across OECD countries rose 0.3 percentage points to 34.1%, the highest on record, according to the OECD’s Revenue Statistics 2025, published in December. The US sits about 8.5 points below it.

The OECD ratio went up in 22 of 36 countries with data, fell in 13 and didn’t move in one. Denmark had the highest at 45.2%, Mexico the lowest at 18.3%.

US Cyber Information-Sharing Law Runs on Stopgaps While the EU Cyber Resilience Act Reporting Clock Starts

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 11 September 2026 a new obligation started for every company selling software or connected hardware in the EU. If a vulnerability in one of their products is being actively exploited, they now have 24 hours to send an early warning, 72 hours to file a notification, and 14 days after a fix is available to send a final report. It applies to products already on the market too. ENISA, the EU cybersecurity agency, opened its single reporting platform the same day.

EU Cloud and AI Development Act Could Shut US Cloud Providers Out of Sensitive Public Contracts

Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Amazon, Microsoft and Google run most of Europe’s cloud computing. A law now moving through Brussels could decide whether they may keep hosting its most sensitive public data. On 8 September 2026 EU governments went through the key part of the proposed Cloud and AI Development Act, articles 29 to 44, article by article. Those articles set who qualifies to host public-sector data at each level of sensitivity, and they turn on conditions the United States may not meet.

Permitting Reform Compared: The US Rewrites NEPA, Britain Passes Its Planning Act and the EU Proposes Deadlines With Tacit Approval

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The environmental impact statement for an 88-mile railway in Utah ran to 3,600 pages. When the case reached the US Supreme Court in May 2025, the justices used it to change how the country’s main environmental review law works. In Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, the Court told judges to give agencies substantial deference on how they carry out reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, and said agencies don’t have to study separate projects upstream or downstream of the one in front of them.

US CLOUD Act vs EU Law: The Data Privacy Framework Survives Its First Court Test as US Cloud Giants Build Sovereign Versions

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

American cloud companies run most of Europe’s computing, and American law can reach their data. The CLOUD Act of 2018 lets US authorities require a provider to hand over data it controls, wherever it’s stored. In June 2025 a French Senate inquiry asked Microsoft France’s legal director a simple question. Could he guarantee that data about French citizens held by Microsoft would never be handed to US authorities without French approval? Anton Carniaux answered: “No, I cannot guarantee it.”

US Visa Bans and Tariff Threats Meet Europe's Digital Services Act Fines on X and Temu

Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In late December 2025 Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa bans on five Europeans connected to online content rules. They included Thierry Breton, the former EU commissioner who had driven the Digital Services Act, and the heads of three campaign groups that work on online hate and disinformation. The European Commission strongly condemned the move. Emmanuel Macron called it intimidation and coercion. A US judge later issued a temporary order protecting one of the five, Imran Ahmed.

US Threatens to Pull Buy American Waivers as Europe Writes 'Buy European' Into Defence Spending

Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

On 15 September 2026 the United States sent EU lawmakers a paper warning that it “will review all potential response measures” if the EU writes a European preference into its next long-term budget. One of the measures on the table: rolling back the Buy American waivers that let European defence companies compete for Pentagon contracts.

Nineteen of the EU’s 27 member states have Reciprocal Defense Procurement agreements with the US. Under them, American buyers waive Buy American rules for those countries’ firms, and the countries do the same for US firms. Washington is now signalling that the deal works only if Europe keeps buying American too.

As Washington Fights the States Over AI Rules, the EU Delays Its High-Risk AI Act Obligations to December 2027

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The United States has no federal AI law, and the administration’s main AI fight in 2026 is with American states that wrote their own. Across the Atlantic, the EU has the opposite problem: one detailed law for 27 countries, which it has just slowed down.

The EU’s AI Act was meant to bite hardest on 2 August 2026. That was the date when rules for high-risk AI, the systems that screen job applicants, score credit, grade exams or support policing, were due to apply. They didn’t. Brussels moved the date, by law, a month before.

Chip Subsidies Compared: US Takes an Intel Stake, EU Drafts Chips Act 2.0, Japan Funds Rapidus and Korea Legislates

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In August 2025 the US government became one of Intel’s largest shareholders. It took 9.9% of the company, 433.3 million shares at $20.47 each, for $8.9 billion. The money wasn’t new. It was $5.7 billion of CHIPS Act grants Intel hadn’t yet received, plus $3.2 billion from a defence programme for secure chips, converted from grants into equity.

Four years after the big chip subsidy laws, the four main manufacturing democracies outside Taiwan are spending in very different ways. Washington is turning grants into deals. Brussels is rewriting its law after admitting the target was out of reach. Tokyo is pouring money into one national champion. Seoul has moved from subsidies to legislation and funds.