New times are dawning in the EU for the big American Internet companies Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft.

Late Thursday evening, negotiators from the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers agreed on a new law for digital markets (DMA), with which the EU wants to limit the steadily growing dominance of large companies on the Internet.

This should lead to more competition, more innovation and more choice for users.

"The agreement ushers in a new era of tech regulation worldwide," said Parliament's chief negotiator Andreas Schwab (CDU).

"Now the digital companies have to show that they also allow fair competition on the Internet." The time of the long competition procedures is over with the agreement, in which the authorities lagged behind the companies.

With the new rules, the EU will become a global pioneer in the regulation of Big Tech.

The American Congress is discussing similar rules.

However, it is uncertain whether they will be adopted.

Henrik Kafsack

Business correspondent in Brussels.

  • Follow I follow

With the DMA, the EU is reacting to the fact that classic competition law has proven to be too slow to prevent the large internet platforms from abusing their market power and taking control in more and more markets.

If the decision is made years later, it is usually too late for the competitors.

The European Commission therefore proposed at the end of 2020 to directly ban around twenty specific types of behavior on the major platforms.

The list of prohibitions includes the targeted preference for one's own services, but also capturing the users of its app store like Apple or Google or collecting customer data from retailers like Amazon and then using it in competition with them.

The list can be adjusted if necessary.

Booking and Tiktok are also affected

The compromise that has now been reached by all the important factions largely sticks to this.

However, he slightly limits the number of companies affected.

All corporations that control at least one Internet platform like a kind of gatekeeper and have a market capitalization of more than 75 billion euros should be automatically affected.

In addition to the large American groups, the Dutch hotel platform Booking and Tiktok, possibly also Zalando and Alibaba, are likely to be affected.

In addition to search engines, social networks and marketplaces, language assistants such as Siri or Alexa and internet browsers are also recorded by the DMA, but not – as requested by the European Parliament – ​​internet-enabled televisions.

At the urging of the European Parliament, the major messaging services Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger and iMessage are being forced to open up to messages or video calls from other services.

Small messengers can "dock" on demand.

A transitional period of four years is provided for participation in group chats.

Contrary to what Parliament demands, there will initially be no interoperability obligation for social services.

So you don't have to allow the newsfeed to be populated with messages from other platforms.

Even with the demand for a ban on personalized advertising for minors, Parliament was not able to assert itself.

To enforce the new rules, the Commission can impose fines of up to 10 percent of the annual global turnover for first violations, and even up to 20 percent for repeat offenses.

In the case of systematic violations, it can ban the gatekeepers from takeovers for a period of time or, as a last resort, break up the corporations.

The agreement now has to be officially confirmed by the EU Parliament and the member states.

But that should be a matter of form.

The DMA will probably come into force in early 2023.