Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – The EU Commission is reassessing its investigations into major tech companies, including Apple, Meta and Alphabet’s Google, the Financial Times reports.
The world’s leading technology companies have insisted US President-elect Trump question the European Union‘s regulatory scrutiny against them. The reexamination could lead to the EU lowering or changing the range of the investigations. It will cover all issues launched since March 2024 under the EU’s landmark Digital Markets Act (DMA), according to the Financial Times.
“It’s going to be a whole new ballgame with these tech oligarchs so close to Trump and utilizing that to pressurize us,”
Stated a senior EU diplomat reported on the review.
“So much is up in the air right now.”
All findings and potential penalties will be halted while the review is completed, but technical work on the cases will persist, the officials stated.
How is the EU ensuring legally strong findings in probes?
On the other hand, the EU Commission stated it remained fully engaged in the effective enforcement of its regulations.
“There is no delay in completing the opened non-compliance cases, and especially not due to any political concerns,”
An EU spokesperson expressed.
The spokesperson said the continuous cases were
“not yet ready at a technical level,”
claiming that such probes took time because of their complexity, novelty and the
“essential to ensure that commission findings are legally strong.”
The Digital Markets Act (DMA) is a significant piece of legislation introduced by the European Union to regulate large digital platforms, known as “gatekeepers,” to ensure fair competition in the digital market. The DMA aims to promote fairness and contestability in digital markets by imposing specific obligations and prohibitions on companies that provide “core platform services” (CPSs) and are designated as gatekeepers by the European Commission. This regulation aims to prevent such companies from abusing their market power.
