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France and Netherlands Back EU Plans to Rein In Tech Giants

France and Netherlands Back EU Plans to Rein in Tech Platforms

France and the Netherlands have proposed giving European regulators powers to stop large tech platforms abusing their dominant position.

The two countries want to be able to force tech giants to give smaller competitors better access and share data on consumer behavior, according to a plan released Thursday.

The governments want a regulatory system that has the power to “break open” such platforms, according to France’s digital affairs minister, Cedric O.

The paper was also discussed on a video conference of European digital ministers Thursday, where 25 member states also signed a joint declaration to collaborate on the deployment of cloud infrastructure across Europe.

In a press conference following the meeting, German economy minister Peter Altmaier said that “big data platforms have a lot of market power: we need regulatory action so that no discrimination of small companies can take place.”

But he tried to damp down expectations that the rules could lead to a split of tech companies.

Break-up is not the right word,” Altmaier said. Germany currently holds the rotating EU presidency of member states.

The proposal from the two countries comes as the European Commission, the bloc’s executive body, is set to propose sweeping measures at the end of the year targeting so-called digital gatekeepers, or platforms with power to control their markets.

As part of the coming Digital Services Act, gatekeeper tech firms could be banned from favoring their own services in search rankings or exclusively pre-installing their own applications on devices and may be forced to share customer data with business rivals, according to draft documents obtained by Bloomberg.

The EU’s antitrust arm is also seeking new powers to police online giants, in an effort to extract meaningful change in behavior after years of probes into the likes of Google have failed to do so. EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager has said that tech giants could be broken up as a last resort with that new tool.

At the press conference Thursday, European Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton, who also took part in the video conference, said the commission’s proposals would impact companies of a certain size, adding the EU is “determined” to regulate gatekeeper companies in the coming years.

The commission will eventually need support from all 27 member states and the Franco-Dutch paper is a sign of early support from two countries that have traditionally had differing views on regulation. France is often more aggressive in seeking new rules, while the Netherlands has typically been more wary of the risks to innovation.

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.