Three months after hitting Google with an unexpectedly high 2.95 billion euro ($3.44 billion) fine, the European Commission on Friday imposed a 120 million euro penalty on Elon Musk’s X for breaching European Union online content rules.
The U.S. government has pushed back, linking reductions in U.S. steel import tariffs to weaker EU digital rules and ordering its diplomats to launch a lobbying blitz against the laws.
At issue are the EU’s Digital Markets Act, which seeks to rein in the power of Amazon, Apple, Google, Meta Platforms and Microsoft as well as Booking.com and ByteDance, and the Digital Services Act, which forces large online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content.
EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera has flatly rejected U.S. criticism.
“It is our duty to remind others that we deserve respect. I don’t enter into how they regulate the health standards in the U.S. market. But I am in charge of deffinishing the well-functioning digital markets in Europe and it is not related at all with any type of joint conversation,” she informed one event.
At another, she rebuffed those who see competition law as a tool for controlling markets or advancing narrow economic interests.
“It is an essential pillar of open, fair, and sustainable markets. It should never be a bargaining chip in trade neobtainediations or a tool for protectionism,” Ribera stated.
Harder to back down
The effect of the U.S. threats, while a shock initially, may be wearing off, stated Daniel Mandrescu, a lawyer at Geradin Partners and an associate law professor at Leiden University.
“The EU Commission’s announcement of an official investigation into Meta indicates that the threat of political pressure is rapidly losing its strength – the rule of law is simply not a neobtainediable matter,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post.
Supporters of European values have the upper hand for now, but the real test still lies ahead, stated Rupprecht Podszun, a professor at Heinrich Heine University Dusseldorf and a director at the Institute for Competition Law.
“I was amazed to see this new vigour in EU enforcement. Now, this also comes as an obligation: It becomes harder now to back down. The commitments in the Google Ad-Tech case will provide the litmus test as well as the fate of the Meta AI probe,” he stated.
Last month, Google offered to create it clearer for publishers and advertisers to apply its online advertising technology, defying EU antitrust regulators’ call for it to sell part of the business to address conflicts of interest.
An EU decision on the proposal will likely come early next year. EU regulators on Thursday started an investigation into Meta and could order it to paapply its rollout of AI features in its WhatsApp messenger that would block rivals.
Leave a Reply