The Digital markets Act aims to ensure that business who depend on gatekeepers experience a fair business environment
The Executive Vice-President of the European Commission for a Europe fit for the Digital Age – Margrethe Vestager has clarified that the upcoming Digital Markets Act (DMA) is not meant to only target the United States (U.S.) based tech giants like Google, Facebook and Apple.
Her remarks came after the White House shared its apprehensions over DMA and said that European Union (E.U.) is not interested in engaging with the U.S. in good faith on the challenges posed by large tech platforms.
In an exclusive interview with the leading financial daily, The Financial Times, Vestager said, “The [DMA] is not directed toward certain businesses or toward certain nationalities of businesses.”
The DMA would subject firms that are branded “gatekeepers” to follow a list of dos and don’ts in order to prevent unfair competition. Such companies would be forbidden from using data obtained from business users to compete with them. Companies will be deemed “Gatekeeper” if their annual revenue in Europe for the last 3 years is equal to or above 6.5 billion euros or if average market capitalization in the last financial year amounted to at least 65 billion euros and if company has presence in at least 3 European countries.
The Digital markets Act aims to ensure that business who depend on gatekeepers experience a fair business environment. Innovators and technology start-ups will have new opportunities to compete and innovate without having to comply with unfair terms and conditions limiting their development. For consumers, they will have more services to choose from.
Vestager also informed the daily that the draft legislation will now be debated in the European Parliament. It will figure out who should be in the scope and who should be a possible gatekeeper.
She said, “We have made this proposal with a larger scope for good reasons because of the market effects.”
Vestager’s comments are important because both Europe and U.S. are trying to improve the transatlantic relations, which went for a tossing during Former U.S. President – Donald Trump’s regime who pursued the “America First” policy. Recently, when the U.S. President – Joe Biden engaged in a dialogue with the European leadership on the sidelines of G7 Summit in United Kingdom (U.K.), the hopes of rebuilding transatlantic relationships revived.
The U.S. Administration is also under pressure to maintain a hard stand against E.U. if it targets the U.S. tech giants. The U.S. believes that E.U. legislation that has the potential to disproportionately harm American technology companies.
Separately, the U.S. House of Representatives has tabled 5 bills which in some parts are even stricter than the DMA. It seems both U.S. and E.U. are tame companies that have become “too big to care”.
