EU’s tech gatekeeper proposals spark tensions over need for ‘flexible’ regulation

MLex Market Insight

News

4.9 • 9 Ratings

🗓️ 12 March 2021

⏱️ 18 minutes

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Summary

If enacted, the European Union’s Digital Markets Act will significantly curb the power of Google, Facebook, Amazon.com and Apple. The legislation is now percolating through the EU’s labyrinthine lawmaking processes and, although widely supported, fault-lines are emerging over how rigorous the law should be, and how much in-built flexibility it requires. It’s a sensitive debate touching on the very philosophy of regulation: rigid rules versus more flexible lawmaking to account for business specificities. It also addresses the limitations of the EU regulator’s success in regulating Big Tech under existing rules.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, welcome. This is Emlex's weekly podcast covering the key regulatory stories of the week. My name is James Panicki, Asia Pacific Senior Editor here at Emmex. It's great to have your company again.
0:23.1	Now, proposed European legislation that's designed to regulate big tech, is, as you would expect,
0:29.6	continuing to resonate around the world. If enacted, this legislation is likely to significantly
0:35.4	curb the power of Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple.
0:40.2	The legislation is bubbling through the arguably Byzantine EU lawmaking process at this very moment,
0:46.7	and while broadly supported by all sides, it appears to be creating something of a rift over
0:52.7	how rigorous it needs to be and how much
0:55.6	inbuilt flexibility it requires. It's a sensitive issue, of course, because despite the European
1:01.6	Commission's success in imposing hefty fines on big tech over recent years, there is nonetheless
1:07.6	a sense that the EU regulator hasn't been able to grapple with the underlying problem of the tech giants market power.
1:16.1	Mlex's editor-in-chief is Lewis Crofts. He's based in Brussels and he joins me now.
1:22.2	Okay, Lewis, first up, we've talked about the Digital Markets Act many times before, but just remind us
1:28.5	what it is and what it's expected to achieve.
1:32.3	The Digital Markets Act was put forward in December by the European Commission as its way
1:37.7	to tackle Big Tech.
1:38.9	It basically says Big Tech has got its hands around the throat of certain markets and it wants to peel those
1:45.8	fingers off the throat and it does that by targeting what it calls digital gatekeepers,
1:51.5	which is frankly Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple and possibly some more.
1:56.9	And it imposes special obligations on them to open up the markets, to make the markets more contestable, to let people in, but also to be fairer to customers, to users, particularly to businesses.
2:10.3	And now there's a list of 18 self-executing obligations, which sounds rather macabre.
2:16.1	Now these have become a fundamental part of the discussion
2:20.7	that's underway at the moment as the legislation percolates through the EU lawmaking system.
	...

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