March 2022 - OPEN INTERNET PROJECT

03/23/2022
NEWS

OIP welcomes the adoption of the DMA, a crucial step towards the regulation of Tech giants !

Open Internet Project (OIP), a European association of organizations and European digital industrialists, welcomes the agreement reached by the trialogue on Thursday 24 March 2022 on the Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulation.

OIP welcomes the agreement reached by the trilogue on Thursday March 24, 2022 on the DMA regulation, and notes with satisfaction that the legislation relating to digital markets in Europe will finally enter a new era.

« The DMA agreement is a significant step forward, which we welcome. Thanks to this new regulation, the European rules governing GAFAM will be much stricter, in particular with the recognition of the notion of gatekeeper, and will allow European alternative solutions – often the very first victims of anti-competitive practices – to develop under more favorable conditions ! »

emphasizes Leonidas Kalogeropoulos

OIP General Delegate

While the European digital market is dominated by a few monopolistic players, the DMA is the promise of more dynamic, open and healthy competition, which should allow innovative digital companies to develop under fairer conditions.

The DMA specifically targets gatekeepers, i.e. “gatekeepers”. As a reminder, these are digital companies in a dominant position and which control in particular the access of their users to the services of third-party companies. Recognizing their key position is key to being able to regulate them as such.

Gatekeepers indeed act as market regulators, they often impose barriers to entry, and ignore our existing European laws. OIP is particularly pleased that the entry into force of the DMA can make it possible to make, in the event of abuse, the sanctions against these gatekeepers more restrictive and dissuasive than before.

However, OIP stresses that there are still points of vigilance, in particular on the speed of application of the text as well as the use of precautionary measures. The final wording (article 22) does not seem to have taken into account the amendments of Parliament, aimed at making the standards for the application of precautionary measures better suited to their effective use. OIP recalls in this respect that the success of the DMA will necessarily depend on the ability of the European authorities to enforce it within short deadlines and, if necessary, with dissuasive sanctions.

Contacts:

Léonidas Kalogeropoulos, General Delegate : +33607315126 – l.k@openinternetproject.eu

Anaïs Strauss, Adviser :+33757503010 – anais.strauss@openinternetproject.eu

26, rue de l’Université • 75007 Paris
+33 (0)1 53 45 91 91

03/09/2022
NEWS

Publication of a letter on the decision of the Trialogue not to keep the European Parliament's version of article 22 of the DMA on the precautionary measures.

The Open Internet Project has gathered converging information indicating that the European Commission and the European Council are on the way to rejecting Article 22 of the Digital Market Act as adopted by the European Parliament in December 2021 on precautionary measures.

As the DMA Trialogue draws to a close, the Open Internet Project (OIP) wishes to express its deepest concern with the information we have gathered, all of which indicates that the compromise version of Article 22 of the final text of the DMA would include the original proposal of the European Commission, and would therefore not take into account the text adopted by the European Parliament, aimed at modifying the standard of precautionary measures.

Indeed, Article 22, as proposed by the European Commission, requires that interim measures could only be applicable if the damage to be prevented is “irreparable”. However, with this requirement, the standards for the implementation of the provisional measures prove to be too high, so that this measure – worded identically to Article 8 of Regulation (EC) No 1/2003 – is and will remain inapplicable.

The fact that the provisional measures have only been applied in the digital sector once in 19 years bears witness to this, and the OIP has been working steadily for 4 years to ensure that this drafting evolves!

Faced with the abuse of a dominant position by the Internet giants, from which whole sections of the European digital economy suffer, the problem of urgency in the face of threats of market eviction is essential, and requires the shortening of procedural deadlines. Time is the ally of monopolies and the enemy of European companies which suffer from the abuse of dominant position by the American giants and tomorrow potentially by new global giants which are developing new abusive practices.

In order not to leave European businesses, particularly in the very fast-paced digital world, to suffer from market foreclosure practices, with no other solution than to wait for years for litigation procedures to come to an end, it is imperative to reform article 22 of the DMA regulation by adopting the version of the European Parliament which aims to replace the condition of “irreparable” damage by “immediate”!

This is the meaning of the vote that took place on December 15, 2021 in the European Parliament, and the European digital industry could not understand that this vote would be challenged by the trialogue on this vital issue for its future.

Contacts:

Léonidas Kalogeropoulos, General Delegate : +33607315126 – l.k@openinternetproject.eu

Anaïs Strauss, Adviser :+33757503010 – anais.strauss@openinternetproject.eu

26, rue de l’Université • 75007 Paris
+33 (0)1 53 45 91 91