For Emmanuel Macron, this must be an achievement of his European record, which he will be able to take advantage of in his campaign for the presidential election: transforming into legislation the proposals that the Commission made a year ago to better regulate the digital world. It is not yet won, but the two European co-legislators – the Member States, on the one hand, the European Parliament, on the other – have moved forward and are expected to start negotiations soon. France, which will assume the presidency of the Council of the European Union (PFUE) from 1er January 2022, will do its utmost to accelerate them.
For one of the two texts in question, the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to prevent abuses of a dominant position by digital giants, this should not pose a problem. The European Parliament was to vote on Wednesday, December 15, on the compromise reached by elected officials, less than three weeks after the Twenty-Seven did the same. And between the two institutions, the differences are small.
In both cases, the overall philosophy of the text has not been changed. After years of chasing after the infringements of the giants Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple (GAFA) in interminable legal proceedings, Brussels wants to act upstream. The Commission has therefore listed a series of obligations and bans for so-called systemic platforms, i.e. those which, for at least three years, have been present in three Member States, and identified a figure business in Europe exceeding 6.5 billion euros or having a market capitalization of more than 65 billion euros.
Among other things, they will be prohibited from using their customers’ data to compete with them, as Amazon is, for example, accused of doing so with resellers of its platform. They should also allow the SMEs they host to migrate to competing services and access the data of their own customers. They will also not have the right to prioritize their own services in their search engine, like Google, which puts more emphasis on the results of Google Shopping.
Question of thresholds
There will nevertheless be some discussions between the Twenty-Seven and the European Parliament on the issue of thresholds that define what a systemic platform is. MEPs have in fact revised upwards the criteria for turnover (8 billion) and market capitalization (80 billion), which limits the scope of the DMA to GAFA. “We must not fall into primary anti-Americanism”, remarks Renew Europe MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin. Several member states, starting with Berlin, have also always been keen to avoid this pitfall, while the time has come for the reconstruction of the transatlantic relationship after the Trump years.
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