This article was first published by The IATP on 4 September 2025
In an era where Europe obsequiously seeks forgiveness for its colonial past, the European Union (EU) perpetuates a more insidious form of dominance: a bureaucratic imperialism of expedience. Through what has become known as the “Brussels effect”, the EU effectively exports the logic underlying its stringent regulations – originally crafted for its own affluent, mature economies – to developing states, disadvantaging Africa in particular and the global South more broadly.
These regulations, in data privacy, digital markets, and artificial intelligence – not even yet to touch on the thorny topic of climate and energy – impose crippling compliance costs on resource-strapped businesses, stifling innovation and entrenching economic dependency.
While the EU pretends to atone for historical exploitation, this regulatory overreach acts as a modern siege, protecting EU firms from emerging competitors in Africa and beyond and ensuring its ideology of nanny-statism becomes a global phenomenon.
This week, the Free Market Foundation (South Africa), in association with the European Policy Information Center (EPICENTER) and the IATP, launched its report, The Brussels effect in South African public policy: An imperialism of expedience?, whereby it critically examines the pernicious and lazy adoption of EU regulatory models by South African politicians, instead of tailoring solutions to local contexts. The EU’s satisfaction with being a global “standard-setter” does not go unnoticed.
Focusing on digital technologies policy in particular, the report highlights how South Africa’s Protection of Personal Information Act mirrors the EU’s GDPR, imposing burdensome data consent rules that hinder development and research. Recent (binding) recommendations issued by the South African Competition Commission similarly echo the EU’s Digital Markets Act and Copyright Directive, targeting “gatekeeper” platforms with anti-self-preferencing measures and demands for revenue-sharing with news publishers, which will in time risk South Africans’ access to information. The even more recent National AI Policy Framework, meanwhile, subtly seeks to align future AI regulation in South Africa with the EU’s AI Act, risking overregulation of low-risk tech and benefiting favouring large firms over startups.
The report contrasts South Africa’s dire economic realities – near-zero growth, global record-setting unemployment, and declining investment – with the EU’s context, arguing this imported regulatory logic has and will exacerbate stagnation. Prior EPICENTER research showing how EU policy has done harm to innovation in Europe itself is also drawn upon – if Europe itself often struggles to comply with these regulations, what hope does a poor economy like South Africa have?
The report urges strategic adaptation over blind mimicry, regulatory exemptions for research, resistance to Digital Services Act-type censorship, and a very light-touch approach to AI, inspired by innovation hubs like Singapore or the US.
Even as Europe publicly repents for colonialism’s scars, the Brussels effect disadvantages the developing world anew, ignoring desperate struggles with poverty, government corruption, and weaker economies. The Brussels effect, far from benevolent, fosters a regulatory hierarchy, shielding European markets while dooming global South innovators to perpetual catch-up, all without the overt force of empires past.
