Industry calls on EU competition chief to wrap up investigations
Probes against companies for breaching the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA) should be wrapped up soon to stop ongoing breaches of the competition rules, a group of different associations and businesses urged Teresa Ribera, European Commissioner for Competitiveness, in a letter sent on Tuesday.
The DMA aims to ensure fair competition between online platforms and started to apply early 2024, but none of the European Commission investigations into US tech giants Apple, Alphabet and Meta for alleged breaches of the law, have been closed.
“The Commission rightly decided to open non-compliance investigations into such gatekeepers, but this has not led them to comply with the law. It’s time to adopt non-compliance decisions which deter gatekeepers from disregarding the law,” the letter, signed by 36 companies, including France Digitale, the Digital SME Alliance, Spotify as well as EU consumer group BEUC, said.
The DMA was designed to give consumers greater choice and to achieve more innovation in online markets. The industry believes however, that these promises “remain unfulfilled”.
“We urge the European Commission to take immediate and decisive action, by first concluding the ongoing non-compliance investigations and by using all the tools it has available in the DMA. Breaking the law should no longer be a profitable business Strategy,” the letter said.
In September 2023 the Commission identified six gatekeepers under the DMA: Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft, who together account for 22 core platform services that fall under the scope of the rules. Last year, it added hotel renting website Booking.com to the list. They all had six months to comply with the rules.
Last March, the EU executive opened non-compliance investigations into Alphabet – Google’s owner – Apple and Meta. In the meantime, the EU enforcer has sent preliminary findings to Apple and Meta. The first decisions are expected by March.
In case of an infringement, the gatekeepers risk fines up to 10% of their total worldwide turnover and up to 20% in case of repeated infringements.
