EU lawmakers pass landmark tech rules, but enforcement a worry

• EU lawmakers have approved ground-breaking regulations to limit the power of tech behemoths.
• However, because of limited resources, enforcing the regulations may prove difficult.
• Critics claim that the EU’s taskforce for regulating Big Tech lacks specialized expertise.

On Tuesday, EU lawmakers approved ground-breaking regulations to limit the power of tech behemoths like Alphabet’s (GOOGL.O) Google, Amazon’s (AMZN.O), Apple’s (AAPL.O), Facebook, and Microsoft’s (MSFT.O). However, because of regulators’ limited resources, enforcing the regulations may prove difficult.

Lawmakers also adopted the Digital Services Act (DSA), which obliges online platforms to take greater steps to monitor the internet for illicit content, in addition to the regulations known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

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Companies who violate the DMA and/or DSA may be subject to fines of up to 10% of their annual global revenue. On both sets of regulations, lawmakers and EU member states had already established a political agreement earlier this year, but some specifics remained to be worked out. View More

Margrethe Vestager, the head of the EU’s antitrust agency, learned from her examinations of the firms when developing the two rule books for Big Tech. Critics claim that the DMA taskforce she established, which is slated to include roughly 80 people, is insufficient.

A larger taskforce is needed to compete with Big Tech’s strong funds, according to legislator Andreas Schwab, who guided the idea through the European Parliament.

Similar concerns were expressed by the European Consumer Organization (BEUC).

BEUC Deputy Director General Ursula Pachl said in a statement: “We sounded the alarm last week with other civil society organisations that if the Commission does not hire the expertise it needs to monitor Big Tech’s behaviour in the market, the legislation could be hampered by inadequate enforcement.”

The DMA is expected to compel businesses to make changes by compelling them to interoperate their messaging systems and give corporate users access to their data.

Business users might advertise rival goods and services on a platform and close deals with clients away from the platforms.

Companies would not be permitted to prioritise their own services above those of competitors or restrict users’ ability to uninstall pre-installed software or apps, two measures that will severely hurt Google and Apple.

The DSA forbids targeted advertising for children or based on private information such political beliefs, gender, race, or religion. Dark patterns, or strategies that trick users into providing personal information to businesses online, would also be outlawed.

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