The European Union has decided to take matters into its own hands to combat GAFAM’s anti-competitive practices. Yesterday, member states agreed on a list of rules that, once in force, will more strictly regulate the activities of digital giants. Checking redemptions, access to alternative shops, protection of personal data, we are making an inventory of the announced measures.
The GAFAMs just have to watch out, Europe is watching the grain. Those who have been inflicted a lot of fines in recent years, without seeming to have any real long-term effect, the EU’s response will now have to cope. Indeed, this Thursday 24 March “the most important economic regulation of recent decades” as described by Cédric O, the French Secretary of State for Digital, was signed between Parliament and the Commission of the Member States, following last year’s US initiative†
Indeed, the two institutions have agreed on the new Digital Markets Act (DMA, the legislation that regulates digital markets) that mainly focuses on Google, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Amazon and Microsoft, but also on other platforms such as TikTok and Booking. Now done with allocating sanctions on a case-by-case basis, which does not seem to shock those involved. The latter must comply with . from January 2023 twenty lines under penalty of sanction by the court.
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Europe takes the bull by the horns to fight against GAFAM
First, every business takeover by a GAFAM is investigated meticulously by the European Commission, who will ensure that the transaction is not intended to silence competition. It is indeed hard not to have this fear in the face of the recent acquisition of Activision-Blizzard by Microsoftthat rocked the video game world at the beginning of this year.
Moreover, the digital giants no longer have the right to promote their own services at the expense of that of the competition. Google and Meta in particular regularly receive fines of several million euros for mark their own ad networks within their respective search engine† Same observation for application stores. From next year, Google, Apple and Microsoft must host alternative shops on their operating systems.
Along the same lines, publishers will no longer have the right to:impose pre-installed software, as found on iOS and Android. In addition, the European Union wants to continue the efforts of the GDPR by better protecting users’ personal data. To do this, the GAFAMs will need to obtain their consent to use their data from third party platforms for advertising purposes. In addition, they will no longer be able to use the data collected by their services about competing companies for strategic purposes.
Finally, messaging apps should allow messages to be sent to each other† In other words, a user on whatsapp can communicate with a contact on Signal or Telegram. If these rules are violated, the GAFAMs can be fined 10% of their worldwide turnover† In the case of a recurrence, this can even rise to 20%.
Following this announcement, the principals concerned did not fail to respond by stating: their care† According to Apple, interviewed by AFP, “certain provisions will create unnecessary privacy and security concerns for our users”† Google, for its part, said to itself “concerned about the potential risks to innovation and the variety of choices offered to Europeans”†
Source: The world
