Federal Trade Commission chair Andrew Ferguson warned that compliance with the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA) could expose major technology platforms to U.S. legal risks. But Brussels and London-based partners argue his reading of the law is flawed and politically motivated, reported by Law.com.

“The limitations that the DSA imposes are limited to content which is illegal in the EU,” said Tim Van Canneyt, a partner at Fieldfisher in Brussels. “If such content is not illegal in the U.S., they will not have to take any action in the U.S.” He suggested Ferguson’s comments were “rather political” rather than grounded in legal analysis.

London partner Nathalie Moreno of Kennedys said Ferguson’s statements mischaracterized the EU law and were “legally incorrect.” She emphasized that the DSA is designed to work in tandem with the EU’s GDPR privacy regime, without weakening data protection standards. The real compliance challenge for companies, she said, lies in building structures that satisfy EU requirements while managing divergent U.S. expectations.

Ferguson’s concerns, voiced at a Harvard University event, focused on the possibility that uniform global compliance systems could dilute privacy protections for American users. He warned that foreign governments could exploit corporate incentives to streamline operations by aligning policies across jurisdictions, citing both the EU’s DSA and the U.K.’s Online Safety Act.

For Van Canneyt, the remarks illustrate the strength of the “Brussels Effect,” a term coined by Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford to describe the phenomenon of multinational companies adopting EU standards beyond Europe’s borders. He noted that Ferguson’s comments implicitly recognized the EU’s growing regulatory influence despite U.S. resistance.

Platforms including AliExpress, Amazon, Apple, Booking.com, and Facebook fall under the DSA’s scope, while the European Commission has already found Temu and X in breach of its requirements. Litigation has followed: Amazon is contesting its designation as a very large online platform before the EU Court of Justice, while Meta and TikTok have challenged supervisory fees levied by Brussels to fund oversight.

Moreno said fears about data protection stem largely from the DSA’s requirement that platforms share information with researchers and regulators. But she pointed out that disclosures must be subject to necessity, proportionality, and confidentiality safeguards. The bigger risk, she argued, is that companies applying uniform global processes may inadvertently create inconsistencies with U.S. privacy expectations. That, she said, reflects corporate compliance choices—not shortcomings in the DSA itself.