The new community law will implement “new responsibilities that will help Europeans feel as safe ‘online’ as they are in the physical world,” argued Margrethe Vestager.
The European Commission will present in December a new law on digital services that will give “new responsibilities” to platforms like Google in the European Union (EU), further strengthening community regulation, Vice President Margrethe Vestager said this Thursday.
“In a few weeks, in December, we will publish a proposal that will help to create a more reliable digital world […], through a new Digital Services Law, which will update the Directive on Electronic Commerce and will require platforms take new responsibilities in dealing with illegal content and dangerous products, ”said Margrethe Vestager.
Speaking in an “online” debate organized by the European Policy Center think tank, based in Brussels, the European Commission’s executive vice president responsible for the areas of digital and competition contextualized that digital platforms like Google “have become ‘gatekeepers’”, that is, internet content intermediaries, which gave them “enormous power”.
They can influence our safety, whether dangerous products and harmful content are spread widely or are quickly removed. And they can affect our opportunities, whether the markets respond to our needs or work only in the interest of the platforms themselves, exemplified Margrethe Vestager.
Stressing that these platforms “even have the power to guide political debates, and to protect or undermine democracy”, the official noted that there is a “great dependence” on this type of services, which is why Brussels wants “clear and simple procedures” regulation.
And this is where the new community law comes in, which will implement “new responsibilities that will help Europeans feel as safe ‘online’ as they are in the physical world,” argued the European Commission’s executive vice president.
Regarding the issue of regulation, the official said that “the Digital Services Law will improve the way national authorities cooperate, to ensure that the rules are properly applied, across the EU”, in addition to giving it to Brussels ” power to intervene, when necessary, to enforce the rules ”.
In an interview with the Lusa agency last May, Margrethe Vestager had already defended more powers to deal with the technological giants, announcing the creation of this law.
The objective is “to be able to proceed with investigations on how the market is functioning and also to impose commitments on the participants of that market so that there is room for competition “, he told Lusa at the time.
The official defended, therefore, a revision of the European directive on electronic commerce in order to “determine what are the general responsibilities of platforms”, the creation of legislation for internet content intermediaries (“gatekeepers”) to “say what can and cannot do ”and reinforcement of market surveillance tools.
“At the moment, we have investigations going on regarding Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google, but what I learned in these years is that this is not enough, we need to have regulatory instruments”, concluded Margrethe Vestager in the interview with Lusa.
In recent years, the European Commission’s Competition tutelage, led by Margrethe Vestager, has advanced with heavy fines on US technology giants, including Google, which has already been the target of three harsh warnings from Brussels for abuse of a dominant position in several markets.
