EU’s competition czar warns tech giants on new rulebook

The European Union’s competition czar
Margrethe Vestager on Friday said US tech giants will have to strictly abide
by the bloc’s new rules on how they do business when they come into force in
two months.

EU competition commissioner Vestager was on a visit to Silicon Valley where
she met with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and other big tech
executives.

They discussed the EU’s Digital Markets Act, a first-of-its-kind legislation
that comes into force on March 7.

Under its provisions, six tech titans — US groups Alphabet, Amazon, Apple,
Meta and Microsoft, and China-based TikTok owner ByteDance — have been
labeled “gatekeepers” that run the internet’s core services.

“Gatekeepers have been designated and March 7 is compliance day,” Vestager
told reporters after her meetings.

“It means that those who are designated gatekeepers will have to live up to
the obligations that are relevant to these core platform services that have
been designated. And this is not trivial,” she added.

Those core services include Apple’s App Store; Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and
WhatsApp; Google’s YouTube video platform and Chrome browser, as well as
Apple’s Safari.

One of the DMA’s main aims is to stop larger players crushing the progression
of smaller companies that threaten to become rivals by gobbling them up
through takeovers.

The EU believes past examples of this are Facebook’s buyouts of Instagram and
WhatsApp as well as Google’s purchase of YouTube and Waze.

There will be fines of up to 10 percent of a firm’s global revenues for
breaking some of the most serious competition rules, and authorities will
break up the companies of repeat offenders.

Tech giants Meta and TikTok are contesting the scope of the EU law and Apple
is rejecting the notion that its app stores across all devices amounts to one
store.

“The regulations that it can be challenged. We respect that,” Vestager said,
while pointing out that any challenge would not suspend the DMA’s
implementation.

“We’ve been working with Apple as with the other gatekeepers with a principle
of open door,” she added.

“So far I have no reason to believe that they will not do their utmost to be
compliant by March 7,” she said. (BSS/AFP)