Business separation

Famous technology companies in America may face the worst consequences in the European market as the EU Commissioner for Home Market Affairs prepares to introduce new legislation with rules for digital services.

The EU authorities are going to impose fines and split the business of well-known US technology companies, but on condition that they violate the new rules of two laws: the Digital Services Act, short (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

EU Commissioner for Home Market Affairs Thierry Breton together with European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager are preparing to introduce these laws on 2 December.

The new EU laws include extensive rules that will govern technology companies to prevent monopolies, ensure fair competition and oblige companies to do more to protect their users from illegal content and actions.

European officials have invited around 20 companies, including Microsoft, Booking, Expedia, Trivago and DuckDuckGo (DDG), to discuss these laws via online conferences. The new legislation will also affect Apple, Amazon, Google and Facebook (FB).

The DSA Digital Services Act will force technology companies to disclose to regulators how their advertising algorithms and methods work and what they do to combat hate speech and malicious content on their platforms. The DMA will include prohibitions such as: a ban on the exclusive pre-installation of proprietary applications in operating systems such as Apple Android or iOS, and a ban on the illegal dominance of trading platforms and social networks.

Thierry Breton said: "This crisis has shown the systemic nature of the problems and the role of certain platforms, which often behave as if they are too big to care about legitimate concerns about their own influence".

Also, Breton said that one of the possible consequences for technology companies that break the law may be the requirement to separate their business in the EU. However, this will be a measure of last resort if fines do not work.