European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, during an interview with AFP, March 6, 2024 (AFP/Simon Wohlfahrt)
The EU is ready to deploy all the tools of its new legislation to force technological giants to “change their behavior” in terms of unfair competition, assured Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in an interview with AFP.
Six tech champions – the Americans Alphabet (Google), Amazon, Apple, Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Microsoft, as well as the Chinese ByteDance, owner of TikTok – must comply with the new European regulation on digital markets (DMA), which comes into full force on Thursday.
“What we expect from +access controllers+ is a change in behavior,” explains Margrethe Vestager, vice-president of the European executive.
Certainly, the Danish official recognizes that these companies will not be able to immediately comply with all of the provisions provided for in this text aimed at countering abuse of a dominant position. But European users should already notice a series of very concrete changes, for example an increased choice for Internet browsers and search engines, while each group has until now favored its own solutions.
“We will see (for certain measures) total compliance on the part of certain groups, but I think there will be cases of non-compliance” with the new rules, she observes.
Competition watchdog in the EU, the Commission is given significant powers of control and sanctions by the DMA, with fines of up to 10% of the offender’s global turnover, or even 20%. in the event of a repeat offense, with the threat of dismantling as a last resort.
“If you look at our history, we have shown that we use all the tools at our disposal,” insisted Ms. Vestager, in charge of competition since 2014, in her office on the 12th floor of the Commission headquarters.
The latest in its feat of arms: Brussels imposed a fine of 1.84 billion euros on Monday on Apple for preventing its users from finding out about competing music streaming offers. “We are not here to dismantle companies or to impose heavy fines on you! We are here to lobby for compliance with the rules,” recalls the commissioner.
-More choice” –
European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, during an interview with AFP, in her office in Brussels, March 6, 2024 (AFP/Simon Wohlfahrt)
Margrethe Vestager recalls that the new legislation adds to the antitrust tools already previously used by Brussels against technology companies. “If creativity develops in illegal behavior, we will have all the tools we need,” she believes.
According to her, the major challenge of the DMA is to offer more “choice” to users, and its implementation will be carefully scrutinized on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly for application platforms.
Apple has thus promised to authorize the downloading on its iPhones of “application stores” alternative to its App Store even if some developers complain of overly complex procedures. The Apple brand nonetheless contests certain aspects of the DMA in court, just like ByteDance and Meta. Margrethe Vestager declined to comment on these proceedings: “The courts will decide, and that will guide our actions in the future.”
The Commission also announced at the end of February that it would examine the partnership between Microsoft and the French start-up Mistral in conversational artificial intelligence, while it is already assessing the impact on competition of the investment by the American giant of software in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
If she does not wish to comment on the investigation, Ms. Vestager is reassuring about the Mistral case: “This is an amount of a completely different order of magnitude compared to Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, it “is much, much smaller.” “Of course it is important that we are vigilant … but I think the risk of competition problems is much lower in this situation,” she said.
Margrethe Vestager, who must leave her post after the European elections in June, says she is not sure about her future. “The strange thing is that I don’t know what I’m going to do. I know I’m not done with Europe: it’s an incredible place, there are still billions of things to TO DO”.
© 2024 AFP
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