European Federalists

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EU will not rip up tech rules for trade deal with Trump, senior official says (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by lemmy_news@lemmy.wtf to c/europeanfederalists@lemmy.world

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[–] tal 0 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

She gently pushed back at suggestions that EU digital regulations could be considered trade barriers, saying the same rules applied to all companies, whether European, American or Chinese. “We are not specially targeting certain companies, but we have this risk-based approach in all our rules.”

Ehh. I mean, not as such, but if they're talking about the digital gatekeeper criteria, that criteria also just happens to only match American companies and TikTok (well, ByteDance).

Like, one can argue about whether or not the criteria is justifiable, but I can avoid specifying any class of people or companies by simply using alternative criteria that happen to include the same group.

EDIT: To put this another way, supposing that under Trump, the US produced a list of companies that were subject to special treatment and requirements, and the criteria used, while never explicitly specifying that it only applied to companies headquartered in Europe, used criteria that did so. Whether-or-not the law was justifiable, I am pretty confident that there would be a lot of concern among many parties in Europe that in creating such legislation, the intent was to create such a filter.

[–] Scipitie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That's exactly how it works though. That's why ByteDance is on the list. The commisotjust makes it transparent which companies fulfill the criteria as they can be up to interpretation:

https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/priorities-2019-2024/europe-fit-digital-age/digital-markets-act-ensuring-fair-and-open-digital-markets_en

I'd be interested in which company you'd add or drop? Personally I thought about SAP but they miss the online component and end consumer reach...

[–] tal 1 points 3 months ago

You mean, how could the EU create legislation that wouldn't raise concerns? I think that not specializing legislation to an area where the EU doesn't have domestic players might be a good start. Is self-preference some sort of problem unique to companies that deal in B2C software products, or does it also apply to companies in other areas, like Airbus? Could the EU have simply written legislation that is generic to many companies and also affects Europe-originating companies? Probably, yes.

EU digital market regulations make use of fines linear in global turnover. This produces fines that are disadvantageous to companies with a global presence, and make it very risky for an existing foreign large company to enter a market. The incentives to act poorly and harm caused is not linear in global turnover, but to turnover in a given market. Yes, I get that BEPS creates certain challenges in assigning such fines, but I think that it is pretty inarguable that one can get a more-reasonable number than global turnover.