Tech Giants Face New Rules in Europe, Backed by Huge Fines
European officials want new powers to oversee internal workings at large technology companies such as Facebook Inc., FB -0.25% backed by threats of multibillion-dollar fines, as they seek to expand their role as global tech enforcers.
The European Union’s executive arm proposed two bills Tuesday—one focused on illegal content, the other on anticompetitive behavior—that would empower regulators in some cases to levy fines of up to 6% or 10% of annual world-wide revenue, or break up big tech companies to stop certain competitive abuses.
The bills don’t mention any specific company but, as drafted, one or both would likely apply to several large U.S. tech companies includingAlphabet Inc.’s GOOG +0.29% Google, Amazon.com Inc. AMZN +0.13%Apple Inc. and Facebook.
The EU’s pair of proposals will now begin months or years of haggling over their scope and details, similar to the four years of debate before the EU passed its privacy law, the General Data Protection Regulation, in 2016. Each bill must be approved by both the European Council, representing the bloc’s 27 national governments, and the directly elected European Parliament to become law.
“We hope the future negotiations will seek to make the EU a leader in digital innovation, not just in digital regulation,” said Christian Borggreen, vice president and head of the Brussels office at the Computer & Communications Industry Association, which represents companies including Amazon, Facebook and Google.
“We will never say that we believe that this company or that company is too big,” said Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for the internal market said Tuesday. “But we will say that the bigger they are, the more obligations they have to fulfill.”
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