The package is made up of a Digital Markets Law, to regulate the activity and avoid anti-competitive practices, and another on Digital Services, a tool to repress illegal content online.The first was approved by 588 votes in favor (with just 11 against and 31 abstentions), while the second had the support of 539 legislators (with 54 against and 30 abstentions).
The intention of the European Union is to regulate the activity of the group of giants known as GAFAM (Google, Manzana, Goal -exFacebook-, amazon Y microsoft), although it also includes firms such as bookingonline booking, or social network TikTok. It also affects the online trading company Alibaba or the messaging app Snapchat.
Audits for digital companies
The critical point of the proposal is the definition of criteria to classify a platform as “systemic”or “gatekeeper”, firms of such size that they eliminate competition and basically act outside the existing regulations.
The parameter to classify a company as “systemic” is the existence of “more than 45 million active users” in the European Union.
Firms that fall into this definition will be audited annually by independent bodies, and will remain under surveillance by the European Comission (executive body of the EU).
After several years of unsuccessfully trying to tackle the infringements committed by these giant companies, the EU decided to define the activities of the sector by giving the European Commission the power to decide and act.
The new regulations will establish the possibility of choosing between several application stores, which will allow avoiding the app store Apple, one of the points criticized by MEPs.
Control over the purchases of the technological giants
The legislation also establishes control over all purchase operations of these giants to limit the accumulation of innovation from emerging companies, and avoid acquisitions with the sole objective of ending competition.
It also includes some twenty rules to curb the abuses observed in recent years and, in the event of an infraction, provides fines which can reach up to 10% of the group’s worldwide sales or even 20% in the event of a recurrence.
The big platforms will be prohibited from any favoritism towards their own services in the search engine results, as Google was accused of doing with its online sales website Google Shopping.
Danish Social Democrat MEP Christel Schaldemose, rapporteur for the Digital Services Act, said on Tuesday that giant firms “have long benefited from the absence of rules.”
“The digital world has become the ‘wild west,’ where the biggest and strongest make the rules. But a new sheriff, the Digital Services Act, has come to town,” he said.
In turn, the German conservative legislator Andreas Schwab, who was the rapporteur for the law on Digital Markets, pointed out that the objective of the digital single market is for Europe to receive the best companies and not just the largest”.
Source: Ambito
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