If you’ve clicked “Accept All Cookies” for what feels like the billionth time, you’ve experienced something most Americans never think about: European regulation.

Those seemingly endless privacy banners that now clutter every website didn’t appear because Congress passed a law. They became ubiquitous because the European Union’s privacy rules forced companies to redesign their websites, and rather than maintain one experience for Europe and another for the rest of the world, many adopted the same design.

Georgia is demolishing its Western future — one landmark at a time

Trump was right: Europe’s border chaos proves weak policy kills

Silicon Valley can’t own the Pentagon’s kill switch

It’s a minor inconvenience, but it illustrates a larger trend. Increasingly, regulations written in Brussels are shaping the digital experience of American consumers.

The European Union has become one of the world’s most influential technology regulators, and because America’s largest technology companies operate globally, European rules frequently become global rules.

This phenomenon is often called the “Brussels Effect.” The term was coined by Columbia Law professor Anu Bradford, who argues that the EU’s large market and regulatory regime often compel multinational companies to adopt European standards worldwide rather than incur great expense to maintain separate systems for different markets. Instead, companies redesign their products to........

© Washington Examiner