Twitter’s ‘collision course’ with EU

This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Twitter’s ‘collision course’ with EU’

Sonja Hutson
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Wednesday, November 16th, and this is your FT News Briefing.

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The Japanese yen is rebounding. Europe’s new tech regulations could cause trouble for Twitter. And we get the latest from Ukraine after Russia launched its biggest air strikes since the invasion began. I’m Sonja Hutson, in for Marc Filippino, and here’s the news you need to start your day.

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Japan’s currency is making a comeback on hopes that the US Federal Reserve will slow the pace of its interest rate rises. In the past three weeks the yen has risen from a 32-year low. Its sharp decline this year caused alarm when Japan’s economy actually contracted because of rising bills for imported food and commodities. The government announced a spending package to ease the impact on households and it also intervened in currency markets to support the yen. But foreign exchange analysts and economists say the yen’s fate is dictated by the Fed and the dollar.

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Europe’s landmark tech regulation law goes into effect today. The Digital Services Act gives Brussels new power to regulate Big Tech companies, and this could mean trouble for Twitter. The social media site just rolled out an identity verification system. It’s part of an overhaul by its new owner, Elon Musk. But the verification system has been struggling with impersonators. Our EU correspondent Javier Espinoza says that could make Twitter a target for the newly empowered European regulators.

Javier Espinoza
This is potentially violating posting illegal content or harmful content online. Of course, there will be ways in which, you know, you flag something to the platform and then they can verify whether or not this is legal or not. But the idea, just to go back to the basics of what is changing today, is that Brussels is acquiring new powers to go to Twitter and ask them, how do you work? How transparent are you in the way that you let users online?

Sonja Hutson
So, Javier, what do you think Brussels might do if Elon Musk doesn’t change course with Twitter?

Javier Espinoza
If Elon Musk continues on this path, it’s really heading towards a collision course with Brussels. What does this mean? So from today, Brussels has the power to ask Twitter to change its behaviour, and if it doesn’t, it can impose periodical fines, meaning every week it could fine the platform millions of dollars, up to 6 per cent of its global turnover. And if Elon Musk continues and persists and the platform doesn’t change its way, Brussels even has the power to ban the platform from Europe altogether.

Sonja Hutson
Javier Espinoza is the FT’s EU correspondent.

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Ukraine’s president offered the outline of a peace settlement yesterday and Russia responded with a storm of missile strikes. Moscow’s attack was the biggest one since it launched its invasion in Ukraine nearly eight months ago. Targets included power plants, electricity lines and other infrastructure. The FT’s Felicia Schwartz is in Kyiv and joins me now to talk more about what’s going on. Hi, Felicia.

Felicia Schwartz
Hi, how are you?

Sonja Hutson
So, Felicia, these strikes are also taking place after Ukrainian forces made some big progress in the war. They took back the city of Kherson. It’s the only provincial capital that Russian forces have been able to capture. How important is this?

Felicia Schwartz
It’s definitely a strategic and symbolic blow. Ukraine retaking Kherson means they can target Russian supply lines on the way to Crimea. They are denying Russia what was a kind of strategic vantage point on the Dnipro. But that being said, there is very, very difficult fighting elsewhere in the east and near Donetsk, which President Zelenskyy described as like hell. So while this is quite a significant moment, this is by no means the end of the war.

Sonja Hutson
So Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy says at least 85 missiles were fired at Ukraine. Some of them hit Kyiv, where you are. What was it like on the ground during the strikes?

Felicia Schwartz
I was on the way to meet a contact when the air raid sirens went off and sort of had to make a judgment about whether to keep going or not. And I did go ahead and meet the person, but I changed the location of the meeting to a café in a basement setting so that we might be a little bit more protected. And both the unprotected café and the more protected café were both operating. There were a lot of people inside of both. Life was sort of going on, but definitely a muted tone. People seemed on edge. We could hear a neighbouring table watching videos on Telegram of the first reports of the strikes coming in. So today and generally, businesses have been quite resilient and are finding ways to carry on.

Sonja Hutson
Yeah. And you’ve been reporting on how Ukrainian businesses are coping, especially with these attacks on power supplies. What else have you seen Ukrainian businesses doing to survive?

Felicia Schwartz
So restaurants or shops will just keep operating with the lights off. They’ll light candles. One café I visited for the story, they snaked along an extension cord out their front door to a neighbour’s, a neighbouring building which still did have power so they could, you know, run their coffee machine. There are factories that are getting prioritised for power in the evening instead of during the day. So they’ve changed their production lines to run at night. So people are being creative. But we also know that these outages are significantly impacting Ukrainian businesses and threatening further cuts to the projected GDP, which is already quite impacted by the war.

Sonja Hutson
Does Ukraine have a way of defending itself against an attack on this scale?

Felicia Schwartz
Air defence has been a pretty critical part of the western effort to provide lethal assistance, but there’s probably not going to be enough air defence to go around to protect everything. So the Ukrainians have to make some hard choices and I think it’s a real push from the US and its other allies to try to move as much as they can into Ukraine in the coming weeks and months.

Sonja Hutson
Felicia Schwartz is the FT’s US foreign affairs and defence correspondent. Thanks, Felicia.

Felicia Schwartz
Thanks for having me.

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Sonja Hutson
Before we go, we have a word for our crossword fans. The FT has a new digital crossword app. It lets you solve clues online each day on your phone or your tablet. On Saturdays, you can tackle a plethora of crosswords, cryptic general knowledge and a weekend one. And if that’s not enough, you’ll also find an archive of 30 days of puzzles to keep you busy.

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You can read more on all these stories at FT.com. This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.