EU Lawmakers Pass Strict New Rules Affecting Big US Tech, Marketing & Advertising News, AND BrandEquity
Major EU legislation aimed at placing unprecedented restrictions on how US tech giants do business passed a first and significant hurdle on Tuesday.
A key European Parliament committee has overwhelmingly approved its version of the Digital Markets Act, legislation that will impose sweeping rules on Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
Once passed, the landmark law is expected to give the EU unprecedented powers to act swiftly against these tech “gatekeepers” and impose a strict list of dos and don’ts on their most dominant platforms.
“The current competition rules are not enough,” said German MEP Andreas Schwab, who heads the editorial staff of the DMA in parliament.
The law will mean “game over for unfair practices … The legislator makes the rules, not private companies,” he added in a statement.
The vote is now expected to take place in the full European Parliament in December, with its companion law, the Digital Services Act, due to be passed in January.
The EU has also unveiled plans for colossal fines of up to 10 percent of their sales on tech companies that break competition rules, which could even lead to their breaking …
These final laws will be negotiated with EU member states, with ministers due to give the green light to their own versions at a meeting in Brussels on Thursday. The hope is to have them in effect on January 1, 2023.
Legislative work is picking up speed a year after the European Commission made its first proposals and is paving the way for laborious negotiations between member states and MEPs in early 2022.
Big tech companies and other interests are pushing hard to influence the outcome, and member states will weigh to the end with their own national priorities.
Watchdog ordered Apple to pay € 134.5m and e-commerce company Amazon € 68.7m for breaking EU laws through restrictions that penalized product sellers Apple and Beats …
The algorithms of big tech companies can have a significant impact on digital news media revenue, by determining the visibility of an article in a Google search or on a Facebook news feed.