According to Take Crunch, Commission Executive Vice President Margrethe Vestager said at the International Competition Network (ICN) conference last week that the European Union plans to begin implementing the Digital Markets Act (DMA) in the spring of 2023. The antitrust law, which creates a new set of restrictions to curb Big Tech’s dominance, could be adopted as early as October this year, according to Vestager.
What’s New?
During her speech at ICN, Vestager remarked, “The DMA will go into force next spring, and we are poised to implement as soon as the first notifications come in.” Take CrunchVestager suggests that once the laws go into effect, the commission will be ready to act against any infringement by “gatekeepers,” which includes Meta, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon.
The UNHCR may have additional time to prepare if the DMA application is delayed.
Gatekeepers are enterprises with a market value of more than 75 billion euros ($82 billion) and a social platform or app with at least 45 million monthly users, according to the DMA, which still requires final approval from the Council and Parliament.
What’s More?
If they are found to be in violation of DMA guidelines, they may be fined “up to 10% of their total global sales in the past fiscal year,” a sum that can rise to 20% if the infraction is repeated.
According to the DMA, guards will have three months to notify the Commission of their status, followed by a two-month wait for confirmation from the European Union. This delay, combined with DMA’s late implementation, may mean that we won’t witness any meaningful conflicts between the EU and Big Tech until the end of 2023.
“I’m looking forward to the next episode. “This entails a lot of tangible preparations,” said Vestager. “It’s about putting in place new mechanisms inside the Commission… It has to do with personnel. It has to do with setting up computer systems.
Digging In More Details
It involves the creation of additional legal texts pertaining to procedures or notification forms. Our teams are presently working on all of these preparations, and we hope to start implementing the new structures as soon as possible.”
While delaying the DMA application may give UNHCR more time to prepare, Take Crunch He points out that the delay may also serve as an incentive for criticism if the commission fails to address any major violations that arise between now and the DMA’s implementation date.
Concluding Notes
DMA, if passed, will undoubtedly undermine the business models of the world’s tech titans. First, it might force Apple to enable users to download programmes from outside the App Store, which the company’s CEO strongly opposes, claiming that sideloading can “damage” an iPhone’s security. It may also compel both WhatsApp and iMessage to become interoperable with smaller platforms, a policy that might make maintaining end-to-end encryption problematic for WhatsApp.