EU: MEPs vote on new rules governing digital giants

The new rules voted by MEPs on July 5, 2022 aim to outlaw the anti-competitive practices of Gafam – Google, Apple, Meta (Facebook), Amazon and Microsoft.

AFP - JUSTIN TALLIS

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

MEPs validated with a very large majority, this Tuesday, July 5, two innovative pieces of legislation to regulate the digital giants Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft.

These two laws aim to respond to the socio-economic repercussions of the technology industry and which aim to protect both the users of these platforms, but also the companies.

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The European Union is a pioneer in this area.

With these two digital laws, it now forces online companies to better protect users, while strengthening the responsibility of digital giants and limiting their power.

More stringent obligations

The so-called DSA,

, is a law on digital services.

Its objective is to regulate online content by forcing major platforms to respect the laws and cooperate with regulators.

The new regulation requires the rapid removal of any illegal content (according to national and European laws) as soon as a platform becomes aware of it.

The DSA also obliges online sales sites to verify the identity of their suppliers before offering their products.

It requires platforms with more than 45 million active users in the EU to assess themselves the risks associated with the use of their services and to put in place the appropriate means to remove problematic content. 

The other law, the DMA,

, is a law on digital markets.

It must stem the anti-competitive practices of Gafam.

Google will in particular be prohibited from showing any favoritism towards its own services in the results of its search engine, as with its online sales site Google Shopping.

The new law will also prevent Amazon from using data generated on its sites by corporate customers to better compete with them.

About twenty rules must therefore be respected under penalty of dissuasive fines.

Innovative texts

These laws will make it possible to establish a level playing field in order to encourage growth and innovation and thus offer a wider choice to users.

These are pioneering texts that could well inspire other states on an increasingly sensitive subject, particularly in the United States.  

These new laws were presented last spring and had already received a favorable response from MEPs.

On July 5, the first text was therefore approved by 588 votes (11 against, 31 abstentions) and the second by 539 votes (54 against, 30 abstentions) during a vote in plenary session in Strasbourg.

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