BRUSSELS—In a bold new approach to international mergers, Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish this week issued a dire warning to European Union regulators: If they don’t block David Ellison’s proposed Netflix deal, French youths could soon be saying “dude” and “awesome” instead of “bonjour.”

Paramount, long considered the world’s leading supplier of unnecessary Mission: Impossible sequels, claimed that the mere presence of Netflix’s streaming algorithms would be enough to eradicate centuries of European culture overnight. “It starts with a single season of Emily In Paris, and next thing you know, the EU anthem is just the Friends theme song,” Bakish said gravely at a press conference attended by three confused interns and a very lost tourist.

Despite these warnings, European regulators remained unmoved. “We reviewed the dossier and, quite frankly, found it more frightening than that episode of Black Mirror with the killer robot dogs,” explained EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, sipping what she insisted was ‘very European’ coffee. “But we already survived HBO Max, so how bad can Netflix really be?”

Meanwhile, insiders reported that the primary audience for Paramount’s scare campaign appears to be former president Donald Trump, who has no official regulatory power but reportedly texted, “Streaming wars? More like streaming yawn!” to his 12th Truth Social account.

A Paramount lobbyist, who asked not to be named because he feared ‘Netflix revenge recommendations,’ summarized the strategy: “If we terrify enough bureaucrats, maybe we can finally get a new Star Trek spin-off greenlit.”