NEvociations on customs duties or not, European legislation on digital giants continues to apply. The message that the European Commission has just sent to Donald Trump is clear. The Brussels executive announced on Wednesday April 23, financial sanctions against Apple and Meta (Facebook, Instagram). The two groups are accused of breaking the new digital market regulations, the Digital Market Act (DMA), adopted in 2022. This aims in particular to facilitate small businesses against large technology groups.
The European Commission criticizes Apple for preventing applicants from applications for informing users about alternative and less expensive means of buying digital products outside the App Store, the iPhone manufacturer's applicant store. Meta is sanctioned for having set up a disputed system for sharing personal data for advertising profiling purposes. The European Commission thus inflicts its first fines within the framework of the DMA, in the amount of 500 million euros for Apple and 200 million euros for Meta.
This decision makes a particular relief in full negotiations on customs duties that the United States threatens to apply to European exports. Donald Trump conceives them as retaliatory measures to European tariff barriers, but also to all devices that add the cost of American exports, such as value added tax (VAT), standards, but also digital laws, qualified by Mr. Trump“Extoming”.
Current trials in the United States
The transatlantic balance of power is only starting. It is obviously out of the question for the European Union (EU) to focus on the arguments of the American administration by being dictated by its legislation according to the commercial interests of the United States. The DMA and the Digital Services Regulations (DSA), which aims to fight against the excesses (hatred, disinformation, counterfeits) online content disseminated by the Internet giants, are not tools of commercial protectionism, but regulatory instruments.
They aim to protect the rights and freedoms of European citizens and to enforce free competition. This is constantly flouted, in a sector where a handful of players are in a quasi-monopoly situation, and take advantage of each technological advance to extend their market power.
The best proof that it is essential to regulate the activity of the Internet giants is that they are also prosecuted in the United States by the Antitrust justice. Two trials are underway concerning Meta and Google, accused of having developed anti -competitive strategies. Supervising the internet giants is therefore in no way a fad of Europeans to protect a market that escapes them, but a necessity in order to limit an increasingly problematic power.
The EU must remain firm in its will despite commercial threats brandished by Donald Trump. By inflicting moderate fines given the sanctions incurred, the Commission has chosen a proportionate approach, while showing that it has the means to impose its rules on a market which these companies can hardly happen. Faced with the unpredictability of Donald Trump and his untimely foot changes, consistency remains the best answer.
Source: Lemonde