The European Union is about to launch new rules on the digital market and the internet giants that don't respect them could be dismembered. The threat comes from the EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, Thierry Breton, who will sign the "Digital Markets Act" and the "Digital Services Act” together with Margrethe Vestager, Commissioner for Competition and Vice-President of the European Commission.
The two new packages of regulations will trigger controversies not only with the giants of Silicon Valley, but also with the new Biden administration, which - although it claims to deny Trumpian protectionism - certainly will not willingly accept the attack on the interests of the Big Tech (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft).
Breton explained that "structural separation", i.e the dismemberment of the groups' European operations, will be among the sanctions included in the new European rules. Of course, it will be enforced only as a last resort, the last step of an escalation that will start from fines and requests for temporary remedies, to arrive precisely at the unpacking of the companies that abuse their dominant position on the European market.
If they don't want to run into sanctions, the web giants will have to obey a series of new prescriptions, such as reveal the algorithms, make the advertising market transparent and share the data collected on the net to rivals. If they don't do all this, they will be liable to conviction for abuse of a dominant position.
But it's not over. Google and its brothers will also have to fight against incitement to hatred and violence, fight against counterfeiting and better protect copyright and copyright.
Meanwhile, on Wednesday the European Commission proposed a new EU governance on big data in line with the European principles of protection of personal information, consumers and competition.
On the tax side, however, France has announced that it will apply the Web tax despite US threats of retaliation. A forerunner rule that will pave the way for new European legislation, on which the EU will focus once the project for a Web Tax at OECD level has foundered.
In short, Joe Biden has yet to take office, but it is already clear what will be the greatest reason for friction between Washington and Brussels in the coming months.
