After all, it was the Commission which pushed the liberalization of the telecommunications industry through, against the will of the member states themselves. In many areas, its power is limited, but the Commission is nevertheless an important pressure point. Casting this as a globalization issue would be a simplification, especially because economic aspects matter to a lesser degree than cultural ones. Culturally, Germans have no problem adapting American styles and fashions, an effect that helped the Internet over here considerably. Identity begins to matter, though, if you go deeper into the consequences.
German culture is oriented around consensus and rules.
If the Internet is not seen as a way to advance common goals, if it leads to a diminishing role of long-valued rules, it causes problems. Freedom of speech is clearly not a European concept just as freedom of international trade is no genuine concept under US law. What Europeans love to do, however, is to accent their unique identities, those that separate them from the people just twenty or fifty kilometers away in another European country. Economically, no European country is in a position where a slowdown of Internet use or electronic commerce would really be felt. In Germany, the computer and electronics industry makes up under one percent of the work force.