These were the 10 biggest European tech stories this week

Happy Friday!

This week, we tracked 78 tech funding deals worth more than €445 million, as well as 6 M&A transactions across Europe, including Russia, Israel, and Turkey.

We listed every single deal in our weekly newsletter (note: the full newsletter is now available to paying subscribers only). Here’s an extra overview of the 10 biggest European tech news items for last week:

1) The European Parliament has approved amendments to the controversial Copyright Directive, a piece of legislation intended to update copyright for the Internet age. Few pieces of legislation have polarized Europe this much in recent years.

2) Alibaba is setting up a $2 billion joint venture with billionaire Alisher Usmanov’s internet services firm Mail.ru to strengthen the Chinese company’s foothold in Russian e-commerce.

3) The European Union’s chief executive on Wednesday proposed fining Google, Facebook, Twitter and other online platforms if they fail to remove extremist content within one hour.

4) Paris-based travel marketplace Evaneos has raised a whopping €70 million in a Series D round led by Partech, with participation from new investors Level Equity and Quadrille Capital, as well as existing shareholders XAnge, Serena Capital, and Bpifrance. The company plans to use the money to expand its offering to North America.

5) The Family, a platform that unites entrepreneurs across Europe in Paris, London and Berlin, has raised a new €15 million ($17.4 million) funding round. Private banking and asset management group LGT Capital Partners is leading the round, with HummingBird Ventures, Project A, eVentures and others also participating.

6) The European Union’s executive arm on Tuesday joined Google and a group of free-speech advocates to oppose expanding the bloc’s “right to be forgotten” beyond European borders.

7) TransferWise, one of Europe's largest fintech startups, said Monday it was profitable for the second year in a row. The London-headquartered money transfer firm reported an annual post-tax net profit of £6.2 million ($8 million) for the fiscal year ending March 2018. Annual revenue nearly doubled to £117 million during the period, from £66 million the previous year, TransferWise said.

8) In another blow to the UK government’s record on bulk data handling for intelligence purposes, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ruled that state surveillance practices violated human rights law.

9) JOB TODAY, a mobile-focused casual job marketplace headquartered in Luxembourg, has raised $16 million from 14W in a Series B round extension. The company operates in Spain and the UK; it plans to use the majority of the cash to increase its presence on the British market, where the looming Brexit is supposedly creating a gap between supply and demand.

10) Mobile telecom gear maker Ericsson said on Tuesday it had signed a $3.5 billion multi-year deal to support T-Mobile US' 5G network deployment.

Bonus link: We are back with a new, bigger, better and bolder tech.eu podcast! Check out episode #86 and subscribe today!