By Foo Yun Chee and Bart H. Meijer
BRUSSELS (Reuters) -The European Union on Monday pushed back against U.S. criticism of its landmark tech rules that many feared could be included in ongoing trade negotiations with the United States and subsequently watered down.
Adopted recently, the Digital Markets Act (DMA) seeks to rein in the power of Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, China’s ByteDance and Booking.com.
The Digital Services Act (DSA) requires big online platforms to do more to tackle illegal and harmful content. Both legislations have come under fire from the U.S. administration which says it unfairly targets U.S. tech companies.
“The legislations will not be changed. The DMA and the DSA are not on the table in the trade negotiations with the U.S.,” spokesperson Thomas Regnier told a daily news conference.
He said the EU would not brook any interference from foreign governments on how it enforces its landmark rules which come with hefty fines for violations.
“We are not going to adjust the implementation of our legislation based on the actions of third countries. If we started to do that, then we would have to do it with numerous third countries,” Regnier said.
The EU handed out its first fines to Apple and Meta earlier this year, with both risking further daily fines if regulators find that they have yet to comply with the rules in the coming months.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee and Bart Meijer;Editing by Sudip Kar-Gupta and Louise Heavens)
