REVIEW - European Union Readies To Get Tough On Big Tech

BRUSSELS (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 03rd August, 2020) As the leading tech companies like Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook remain unaffected by the economic ramifications of the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Union is gearing up to bring them to task for alleged unfair business practices.

Last week, the Big Tech CEOs appeared before the US Congress as a part of the antitrust investigation, defending their business track record against allegations of abusing their dominant positions on the market.

However, while the United States has been a relative newcomer when it comes to the efforts to curtail the major tech companies, the EU authorities have been trying to rein them in for a long time.

When it comes to the conflict between Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook versus Europe, there are three avenues of attack used by the latter to pressure them.

The first one is the issue of hate speech and intellectual property rights. Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal, when a consulting firm provided the campaign of current US President Donald Trump with Facebook users' data, several European countries have legislated to oblige the social networks to respect intellectual property rights and inform their customers of what they do with the data. The social networks are also told to supervise what is published and eliminate so-called hate speech as well as explicit sexual imagery.

The second one is the respect of competition rules as the EU competition authorities have been increasingly concerned with potentially hegemonic positions in their markets. A 2019 EU directive on online intermediation services came into force cracking down on in mid-July this year. Among other things, it cracks down on preferential treatment by platform owners such as Apple and Amazon. And now the EU lawmakers are said to be wanting to outlaw preferential treatment altogether.

The third one is the fiscal issue as the Big Tech avoid paying taxes as much as they can with their armies of lawyers and accountants identifying the least-taxed ways of doing business. In late July, French President Emmanuel Macron said he would like to see the EU working on a digital tax against the Big Tech.

Marie Pierre Vedrenne, a French member of the European Parliament from the Renew Europe Group, told Sputnik the rule of unanimity in fiscal matters makes it difficult to implement unified tax pressure on tech companies.

"Some, like Sweden, are still reluctant. They fear a reaction from the United States, taxing European products in response and seeking to protect their national champions - and the GAFAM [Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft] are overwhelmingly American ... We hope to reach a 'trilogue' agreement (the council + the commission + the European Parliament) for 2023-2024, in which the European Commission will play the role of mediator, to reach a solution," she said.

Nevertheless, changing European taxation is a doable aim, according to Marc Fallon, a law professor at the UCLouvain University in Belgium.

"A change in European taxation does not require a revision of the Treaties. Today the EU has no attribution to receive a tax, but a directive, approved by Parliament and the Council, is enough to do so. It's realistic," he told Sputnik.

When it comes to the issues of competition and intellectual property, the former is straightforward, while the latter can be tricky, says law UCLouvain professor Alain Strowel.

"The Competition Directive is clear and there is no discussion. DG Competition [Directorate-General for Competition] is the EU policeman and punishes infringements ... The idea of national states like France or Germany and the EU is to transfer the responsibility for 'cleaning up' social networks of insults, fake news and other objectionable content to the networks, to GAFAM themselves, by making them responsible for the correct application and the cleaning of all critical messages. The EU wants intermediaries (GAFAMs) to be more active and to take responsibility for the content carried by the networks. Is it going too far?" Strowel mused.

Whether or not the EU attempts to curtail the Big Tech power will pan out, they are a sign of a growing trend towards distrust digital companies by those in power, potentially leading to similar initiatives in the future.