Digital Act: Europe wants to limit the omnipotence of digital giants
Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager, during a press conference on the European digital plan, in Brussels, November 25, 2020 © Stéphanie Lecocq, REUTERS
Text by: Agnieszka Kumor
6 min
The European Commission is proposing this Tuesday, December 15 its new digital regulation, a highly anticipated project in the face of competition from Internet giants, whether American or Chinese.
This list of obligations and prohibitions, accompanied by dissuasive sanctions in the event of non-compliance, aims to prevent abuse of power by the Gafam.
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Online hatred, abuse of a dominant position, law of the strongest ... the Internet sometimes looks like a Wild West that
Europe aims to regulate
.
In any case, this is the goal of Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and Commission Vice-President Margrethe Vestager - known for
her firmness vis-à-vis the Gafam
(Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, or the giants of the web).
According to Thierry Breton, responsible for preparing this new legislation,
“
everything that is authorized in physical space must be authorized in the world of the Internet.
On the other hand, anything that is prohibited in the physical space will be prohibited in the online space.
"
The obligations of digital players
But concretely, what will change?
The project is twofold.
The first part, called the Digital Services Act, imposes obligations on all online players, such as that of cooperating with regulators.
The second part, the Digital Market Act, aims to create a unified digital market in Europe with more competition and innovation for the benefit of users.
While Google or Facebook find themselves in the crosshairs of American justice for abuse of a dominant position, Europe is seeking to impose its own conditions.
And the European Union is not going dead hand!
From now on, in the event of a serious offense having the consequences of endangering the security of European citizens, online intermediaries could be fined up to 6% of their turnover.
They could also be banned from operating on the European market.
The digital giants are often singled out for practices deemed anti-competitive.
In the event of a proven violation, the penalties could reach 10% of turnover, and even lead, in extreme cases, to an obligation to separate from activities in Europe for the players involved.
"
Unicorns
" valued in billions of dollars
The last regulation of the European digital space dates from 2000. The idea was then to let digital companies develop.
But since then, they have become mastodons, whose stock market valuation exceeds the GDP of many countries.
Supervising these powers has become a crucial issue, according to Alexandre de Streel, professor of law at the University of Namur (Belgium), an expert in the digital market:
“
We are going to ask them to better moderate illegal content on the Internet or to avoid that there are illegal products in the marketplaces.
We will force them to open the platforms to allow new innovators to enter the market.
There really is a political goal of ensuring a better Internet, with less illegality.
We will try to have more competition, so that we do not have a single large social network, a single search engine, but several.
And if possible, a few European players.
"
A patchwork of national rules in the EU
Europe seems absent in this category of Internet heavyweights.
However, there is no lack of start-ups or scientists.
While in the United States or China, companies have a unified market in the sector, a European start-up must face 27 national regulations that hamper its development and push it to seek success elsewhere.
Not to mention that the culture of risk financing for a company with high potential is underdeveloped in France as in Europe, estimates Jean-François Faure, digital specialist and president of AuCOFFRE.com:
“
We have perhaps 200 start-
ups.
-ups in France who are loved and wanted, because they tick certain boxes.
It is these start-ups that we like to show off, because they are based on an economic model that gives pleasure in the cottages.
But in fact, what makes the industrial or digital French fabric, are all these companies that we do not see and which are constrained on a daily basis by these thousands of small procedures which are so many constraints to our development.
Before even understanding how a given field works, there is already a bad law which constrains it.
"
Towards a digital sovereignty of Europe?
Faced with this patchwork of rules, the European Union must adopt a real common industrial policy, like a kind of digital Airbus.
“
Europe wants to be much more assertive and develop its digital sovereignty,”
explains Alexandre de Streel
.
The idea is to say to
yourself: if you want to work in Europe, you have to work according to European values which are different from American or Chinese values.
Only Europe has enough economic and political weight to bend a big platform.
A country, even a large country, will not succeed.
It is a large market of 450 million citizens, who are relatively wealthy.
It is an economically too important market for Google, Facebook or even Amazon.
"
Giving Europe the tools so that it can deal on an equal footing with the United States or China: this is the challenge of this new digital legislation.
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Also to listen: GAFA: how to supervise them?
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