Berlin There are months in the making of a decision for Deputy EU Commission President Margrethe Vestager. Her two largest reform projects, with which she wants to limit the power of the tech giants in Europe and regulate critical content on the Internet, are entering the home straight.
It is a welcome opportunity for the 53-year-old Dane to drop by the coalition in Berlin and ensure that “important European issues are addressed in the coalition negotiations,” said Vestager.
“In our democracy, the biggest platforms are not allowed to decide the rules of the game,” she said in her speech on Europe at Humboldt University on Monday – the official reason for her visit to the German capital. In addition, on Tuesday it will open the “Smart Country Convention” on the topics of digital administration and the networked city.
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Visiting top politicians
More important than these official dates, however, were the meetings with the possible top politicians of tomorrow, whom Vestager paid a visit. On Monday, the commissioner was a guest at the federal board meeting of the FDP, later she met the incumbent Federal Minister of Finance and possible soon-to-be Chancellor of the SPD, Olaf Scholz.
A meeting also took place with the Greens leadership in the person of Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck, the party said on request. They talked about the areas of “digital transformation, climate protection, competitiveness and the activation of private capital in Europe,” said FDP leader Christian Lindner after the meeting.
For Vestager, the top politicians of the traffic light parties are important contacts when it comes to finding allies for their two megaprojects, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA). The DMA is supposed to prevent the big, especially US-American tech companies like Facebook, Google or Amazon from exploiting and expanding their market power. The DSA is intended to oblige platforms to delete problematic content on the Internet as quickly as possible.
The EU Commission presented a specific proposal for both laws in December 2020. These are regulations that would be directly effective in the member states without national governments having to implement them first.
You expect the DMA and DSA to be completed during the French Council Presidency in the first half of 2022, Vestager said in Berlin. They could therefore come into force in January 2023 at the earliest.
There is a problem with the Council and Parliament
The timetable envisaged by Vestager is optimistic as both Parliament and the Council still have to vote on the Commission’s proposal. The EU Parliament tends to rely on more stringent regulations than intended in the original draft. The institutions also differ when it comes to fundamental questions of definition – for example, who uses a search engine for economic reasons.
Divergences that could further delay Vestager’s ambitious project. “I have a sense of urgency,” said Vestager in Berlin, “I would rather have 80 percent now than 100 percent never”.
Vestager actually sees a favorable window of opportunity for regulations of this kind. In a podcast with “Politico”, she recently praised the new US government and its willingness to take on the big tech companies like the EU.
“It’s like a dream has come true,” Vestager said of the new focus on competition issues and the positive signals from Washington. The transatlantic agreement that something must be done against the market power of the tech giants cannot hide the fact that the EU is targeting American companies with the DMA.
The challenge here: to hit precisely those companies whose regulation is intended without weakening European innovation. An important point in regulating the takeover of innovative start-ups by large tech companies has recently met with criticism. The exit strategy, i.e. the possible sale to larger companies, is an important driver of innovation, according to the start-ups.
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