A European Parliament delegation visiting Washington held “constructive” talks with US representatives over tech policy, amid tense political climate.

On the DC mission this week, lawmakers from the Parliament’s internal market committee (IMCO) met with US companies, key DC policy figures, and Republican Congressman Jim Jordan.

Anna Cavazzini, in charge of the mission, told Euractiv that the lawmakers told Jordan that the Digital Markets Act (DMA) was “neither targeting US companies nor restricting market access.”

Talks were “constructive” and the US representatives were open to “better understanding the DMA,” she added.

The meeting came after the EU’s top diplomat Kaja Kallas was snubbed on Wednesday. Her planned meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was cancelled due to “scheduling conflicts”, after Kallas had already landed in DC.

Jordan, chair of the US House judiciary committee, met the MEPs for 45 minutes. A longstanding Trump ally, he has been one of the most outspoken US critics of the EU’s flagship Big Tech regulations.

He blasted the DMA last week in a letter to EU competition chief Teresa Ribera, claiming it unfairly targeted US companies. He wrote a similar letter to tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen about the EU’s content moderation law, the Digital Services Act (DSA), claiming its provisions were stifling free speech.

“We have explained that this perception is wrong,” Renew lawmaker Sandro Gozi told Euractiv, in reference to the meeting.

According to Gozi, talking to US representatives is “crucial”. The meetings have allowed MEPs to “clarify” aspects of European legislation, and to “create an atmosphere of dialogue”.

One MEP from the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group,  Poland’s Piotr Müller, managed to sneak in a separate meeting with Jordan on Monday, before his colleagues.

The IMCO delegation was only made aware of the meeting between Müller and Jordan after it took place.

“We didn’t even talk about it,” said Gozi. “If anyone is under the illusion that they can have a privileged relationship with Trump on their own, I think they have not understood who Trump is and how he acts,” he added.

Müller justified the meeting as, at the time, the whole delegation meeting “had not yet been confirmed”.

A source close to the mission told Euractiv that if MEPs want to arrange meetings in their free time, “it’s their right”.

Müller said that the discussion was “insightful”, and that he and Jordan shared a commitment to protect freedom of speech from the “overreach by politicians and bureaucrats”. He added that he agreed that certain provisions within the DSA “resembled self-censorship”.

[OM]