Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton wants the EU to equip itself by the end of the year with new repressive tools against Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon and other Microsoft - the American and more generally foreign tech giants. The manager hopes to be able to go as far as exclusion from the single market.
The European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton believes that the GAFAs are “too big not to care” and that the EU must equip itself with new tools for “better supervision”. He calls on the authorities to take advantage of the Digital Services Act, which must be voted on at the end of the year, to set up new repressive tools to weigh in against the American tech giants.
Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft ...: sanctions could go as far as exclusion or dismantling
In detail, the Commissioner would like it to be possible to better monitor the scope of the activities of the major platforms, in particular their action against disinformation or their management of personal data. In the most serious cases, Thierry Breton wants it to be possible to go as far as exclusion from the single European market.
Or to force them to dismantle their activities within the EU when their dominant position threatens local actors. This new threat sounds like a scathing response to Google, Apple, Amazon and other American firms who are circumventing laws to their advantage in Europe.
For example, Facebook was recently banned from transferring European user data to the United States by the Irish Data Protection Commissioner. The social network believes it is unable to provide its services without transferring data to the United States where the legislation is less strict. This resulted in Mark Zuckerberg's social network threatening to shut down Facebook and Instagram in Europe.
Blackmail for some, especially as these platforms have found a place in the daily lives of Europeans and contribute to the economy - at the cost of multiple contortions with tax rules and regulations. The Commission's future tools should make it possible to put the practices of these players back into a regulatory framework, and therefore force them to take specific measures for their European users on pain of potentially losing access to the single market and its 515 million consumers.