BERLIN, March 17 (WNM) - The market power of major tech companies like Google, Apple or Facebook is a matter of concern for lawmakers in the EU, the USA and Russia. Now they want to try to prevent the formation of digital cartels.
As Alexander Kulitz, spokesperson on foreign trade for the parliamentary party of the FDP (the pro-business Free Democrat Party) in the German federal parliament, explained to the World News Monitor, “Governments all over the world are now adopting measures on this issue, and Russia is no exception. For example, China is now moving against the head of Alibaba Jack Ma, and America summoned Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, to appear before the US Congress. Moreover, the EU is presenting legislative proposals like the Digital Services Act or the Digital Markets Act in an attempt to find Europe-wide solutions in parallel to all the ongoing reforms of competition law at a national level.”
This proposal for a law on digital services and a further law on digital markets was presented by the EU Commission on 15th December 2020 and is currently being discussed in the European Council and the European Parliament. With regard to the Digital Services Act, Margrethe Vestager, the EU Commissioner for Competition, said, “Businesses operating in Europe should be able to compete freely and fairly online just as they do offline.” And the Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton said, “Many online platforms have come to play a central role in the lives of our citizens and businesses, and even our society and democracy at large. With today's proposals, we are organising our digital space for the next decades. With harmonised rules, ex ante obligations, better oversight, speedy enforcement, and deterrent sanctions, we will ensure that anyone offering and using digital services in Europe benefits from security, trust, innovation and business opportunities.”
In Russia too - following a few delays caused by the pandemic - a new law will now come into force on 1st April 2021. This law prescribes the pre-installation of Russian software on computers, smartphones and television sets. According to the Russian anti-monopolies authority (Federal Anti-Monopoly Service of Russia, FAS), this will help to make Russian IT applications better known and to make them more easily accessible to users.
To achieve this, an approach has been developed in which all IT developers are given the same access to platforms. In this way, it is intended to uphold the principle of fair competition. Furthermore, users can decide themselves after purchasing a device which apps they want to instal and whether they want to delete any pre-installed apps.
On this point, Alexander Kulitz says, “We will have to wait and see if, with this new law, Russia can in fact break the market monopoly of foreign digital multinationals for the benefit of ‘Russian’ software.” What can be said is that these latest legislative proposals – be they in Russia or the EU – all aim to provide market participants in these times of global, digital interdependence the same opportunities to put their own services on the market.