If you want companies to follow rules, history has shown that only steep fines, or jailing executives work. Where the money goes isn't that important, it's a fi

If you want companies to follow rules, history has shown that only steep fines, or jailing executives work. Where the money goes isn't that important, it's a fine, and it's intent is to be big enough that following laws is cheaper. They want to operate on the EU market, they follow EU laws. EU companies don't get to select which US laws to follow when active in the US. That's probably only part of the story though, it might be a little more behind why this happens now. US have worked to extend the reach of their laws outside the country for decades, aggressively. This is part of what's called soft power, which US has historically been quite good at. The current US administration has dropped the ball on soft power so hard its sad. Not only has it opened up for China in parts of the world where they barely got any play before, the emboldening we see in how China tries to assert jurisdiction over people outside China is almost certainly a direct result of these catastrophic failures of foreign policy. Not only Chine, but it's an extremely obvious case.. Anyway, that kind of massive clownery on the geopolitical arena is going to have consequences. The massive power vacuum alone almost certainly enabled, but likely also forced EU's hand enforcing the laws more aggressively, at least to some extent.