With the Digital Markets Act, a serious rein in of the Internet giants in Europe

Editorial. The European Union (EU) has often been derided for its bureaucratic slowness and its divisions. The agreement reached on March 24 on the supervision of Internet giants shows that the Twenty-Seven also know how to be effective. In one year, the Member States, the Parliament and the European Commission have succeeded in bringing about new legislation on digital markets, the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

This text aims to regulate the anti-competitive practices of the main companies that control access to the Web. Those who are essential in terms of e-commerce, Internet research, dematerialized computing (cloud), digital advertising or even the main social networks will now have to be accountable for their way of operating.

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The Commission has enacted about twenty commandments to which these companies will have to submit. This is to allow communication between two messaging systems that do not belong to the same platform, to prohibit search engines, application stores or e-commerce platforms from promoting their own products and services, to prevent the use of data from companies using a service in order to compete with them, to be able to remove applications pre-installed on a smartphone and to add them from third-party stores, toregulate targeted advertising, or to oblige large groups to notify their acquisitions in order to prevent the predation of innovation by smaller competitors…

EU Celerity

The EU thus draws lessons from the inadequacy of current competition policy to digital issues. Until now, investigations were carried out a posteriori, once infringements had been observed. Offending companies were only sanctioned after long years of investigation by fines of not very dissuasive amounts.

The DMA reverses the logic with ex ante regulation. It is no longer the Web giants who dictate their rules, but the Commission which sets the framework to be respected. Digital technology will now be subject to regulation inspired by that of the energy, banking or telecommunications sectors. The scale of fines has also been adapted to the power of these groups: in the event of an infringement, their amount may range from 6% to 20% of global turnover, which, for Google or Amazon, represents several tens of billions of dollars. In the event of a repeat offence, business transfers may be imposed.

This regulation marks a turning point. We must salute the speed of European execution, despite the intense lobbying of the giants of the Net. This speed must be compared to the slowness of the process in the United States. Despite the commissions of inquiry, the parliamentary hearings, the legislative proposals and the political voluntarism of Joe Biden, no significant regulation has yet emerged.

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Faced with this delay, the EU, thanks to the DMA, has the opportunity to give rise to standards which could inspire other countries and provide a point of support for those who are also seeking to better regulate their digital market there.

However, the game is far from won. The general data protection regulation (RGPD), however promising, has shown that Gafam knows how to find loopholes in the framework imposed on them. The challenge for the DMA now consists in equipping itself with means of enforcement and control that are sufficiently effective to overcome the lack of transparency and willingness to cooperate that these companies have always demonstrated.

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The world

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