Abstract In recent years, the European Union (EU) expanded its digital regulatory competences. However, it is not clear which political trade‐offs occur in decision‐making on digital policy issues. This study examines how European parliamentarians and their party groups position themselves on these issues and which conflict lines emerge. Analysing roll call votes and party‐group press releases on the Digital Services Act (DSA) and Digital Markets Act (DMA) reveals that the emerging structure of contestation does not neatly align with established political dimensions. Instead, political conflict remains fragmented; different aspects of digital regulation resonate with established dimensions of political contestation. The Left–Right dimension plays a role, albeit to a limited extent. At times, other dimensions, such as EU integration, come to the fore. Notably, however, digital policy occasionally brings progressive parliamentarians to side with the far right in opposition to a centre‐right block of the centre‐conservative European People's Party (EPP). To better understand this phenomenon, this article builds on a re‐conceptualisation of digitalisation‐related conflict, arguing for a ‘techno‐solutionist’ versus ‘techno‐pluralist’ issue dimension.
Tyler et al. (2026) studied this question.