Category: Actualités EN

Since the CNIL’s legal argument is valid for many other American digital tools, the association calls on public authorities to seize this opportunity to help data controllers identify alternative European solutions, and to support the transition to solutions. sovereigns respectful of European law.

The CNIL’s decision to prohibit the use of Google Analytics is a direct consequence of the “Schrems II” judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of July 16, 2020. It allows the authority France to remind firmly that in the European digital space, it is not optional to respect European law. The CNIL makes it clear that this right is unfortunately constantly violated when players export personal data from Europeans to the USA despite the cancellation of the Privacy Shield, which itself followed the cancellation of Safe Harbor. It therefore recalls the paramount importance of identifying, adopting and developing European alternatives which avoid such illicit transfers.

As the judicial authorities have pointed out several times, the legal system of the United States is not sufficiently protective of the rights of European Internet users and the security of their data. It is everyone’s responsibility to protect this data. The relentless analysis of the CNIL concerning the use of Google Analytics will therefore apply with the same effects for a whole series of non-European tools and services used most often under the effect of dominant positions that sit on illegal behavior.

The CNIL’s decision to require the use of solutions other than Google Analytics, and to no longer export personal data to the United States, is therefore an important opportunity that European public authorities and entrepreneurs must seize together to adopt , promote and build solutions that strengthen European strategic autonomy in the digital space. These solutions exist in terms of audience analysis as in many other technological fields, and other solutions will emerge and develop. Entrepreneurs are doing their part, and the State must develop an active strategy to help the emergence of these European solutions and promote their visibility and adoption with a support plan for the transition.

Indeed, the vitiated effect of the overpowering of GAFAM, which respects neither our laws nor our institutions, and whose place continues to gain in importance, both in our economy and in our democratic and social life, is revealed everywhere: tax evasion, financing of conspiratorial sites, capture of personal and highly strategic data, looting of our cultural heritage,…

The Open Internet Project (OIP) learned with great astonishment and concern of the provisional program of the seminar entitled « Building Europe’s digital sovereignty », organized by the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union on February 7 and 8 coming… While European digital companies are offering real sovereign technologies and calling for them to be highlighted, defended and promoted, the OIP discovers with amazement the overrepresentation of lobbyists from American companies at a conference devoted to the « building Europe’s technological sovereignty through the development of European champions ».

The main mission of the Open Internet Project is to defend healthy competition in the European digital market. It is therefore within the framework of this mission that it is essential for the association to reinforce information to professionals in the sector, public authorities, or even individuals, on all the useful news concerning the situation of competition. in the European digital market.

The Open Internet Project is also an action association. Highlighting our vision and missions carried out by the association and its members allows European companies in the digital market to understand that they are not condemned to fight alone against abuses of a dominant position, or any other attack on fair competition on the market. the European digital market.

The European association Open Internet Project (OIP) welcomes the adoption of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) regulation last night by the European Parliament, by 642 votes to 8.

It is the adoption of a historic text that sends a clear message: in Europe, it is the legislator who imposes the rules, and not the internet giants.

In this regard, Article 22 on provisional measures is of major importance.

Only precautionary measures make it possible to interrupt abusive behavior and actions by Internet giants within a few months, quickly and effectively, to ensure that competition can develop under fair and equitable conditions by preventing procedures drag on for years. By replacing the terms “irreparable damage” with “immediate damage”, the European Parliament finally makes the use of precautionary measures applicable, and the European Commission will finally be able to pronounce them in the event of a serious and immediate risk weighing on competition.

The OIP sends its congratulations to Dr. Andreas Schwab, rapporteur of the text for the IMCO Commission, who fought for the text to be modified in this way and hopes that the Trialogue will validate the provisions relating to precautionary measures.

→ To learn more about the Digital Markets Act, click here.

With this decision finding Google wrong despite the means deployed by the latter, the Court confirms that the European Commission was right to condemn Google in 2017 to a fine of 2.4 billion euros for preferential treatment of its own price comparator Google Shopping, to the detriment of its competitors.

This is a historic decision which confirms for the first time the principle that a digital player in a dominant position cannot promote its own services in a privileged way: preferential treatment is considered to be discriminatory and therefore prohibited and sentenced.

The OIP was a party to the case, which “officially” lasted more than 11 years!

The European Commission indeed recalls that spending on display advertising in the EU amounted « according to estimates, to around 20 billion euros».

In France, the 220 million euro judgment against Google by the Competition Authority in June 2021 for having granted preferential treatment to its own intermediation and advertising auction management services highlights that the share of Google and Facebook’s market in the digital advertising market reached almost 75% for only 30% of the audience, while the audience share of media present on the internet (Le Figaro, Les Echos, TF1, M6, BFM, RTL, France Info, etc.) is 25% for only 10% market share.

Indeed, the media are the collateral victims of the biased competitive system by which Google has captured a dominant share of the digital advertising market, allowing it to use media content, audience and data to capture value in this market and favor its own inventories (advertising space).

Thus, on a French market of approximately 8 billion euros per year, this means that by favoring its own advertising spaces (Youtube, Google Search, etc.), Google manages through its multiple conflicts of interest and its practices of self-preferences to divert a significant share of the digital advertising market to the detriment of traditional media

The 220 million euros sentence against Google by the Competition Authority for having granted preferential treatment to its own intermediation and advertising auction management services highlights that the market share of Google and Facebook on the digital advertising market reached nearly 75% for only 30% of the audience, while the audience share of media present on the internet (Le Figaro, Les Echos, TF1, M6, BFM, RTL, France Info, etc. .) is 25% for only 10% market share.

Indeed, the media are the collateral victims of the biased competitive system by which Google has captured a dominant share of the digital advertising market, allowing it to use media content, audience and data to capture value in this market and favor its own inventories (advertising space).

Thus, in a market of approximately 8 billion euros per year, this means that by favoring its own advertising spaces (Youtube, Google Search, etc.), Google succeeds through its multiple conflicts of interest and its practices of self-preferences to divert a significant share of the digital advertising market to the detriment of traditional media.

It is between 800 million and 1 billion euros that must be redirected from the duopoly (Google and Facebook) to other natural beneficiaries of advertisers’ digital campaigns. The decision of the ADLC is a decisive decision as a first step to allow this rebalancing.

Indeed, the remedies that Google has undertaken to implement will be able to remove the anti-competitive barriers that penalized Google’s competitors in the digital advertising market.

In July 2018, the European Commission fined Google €4.3 billion for abusing its dominant position in the Android operating system by pre-installing Google Search as the default search engine. The Commission forced Google to stop this illegal tying of Android and Google Search by allowing users to choose third-party search engines. In view of Google’s obligation to end the abuse, the OIP condemns the fact that Google now expects its competitors to pay to be findable and selectable by users, because it only exchanges abusive behavior against another and thus continues to deprive consumers of real choice and to distort competition.

The Open Internet Project (OIP) association welcomes the stated desire of Margrethe Vestager, Vice-President of the European Commission and European Commissioner for Competition, to reform European Union competition law, and to make it a “major priority”, and gives him his full support for this ambitious project.

One of the three main lines of work is the use of precautionary measures.

For more than two years, the OIP has been committed to ensuring that precautionary measures are made operational at European level, as they could allow the European Commission to quickly stop abuses of a dominant position, without having to wait several years. the end of the investigation on the merits.

To make these measures operational, they should be able to be imposed in the event of a risk of “immediate damage” to competition, and not of a risk of “irreparable damage”, as provided for in Article 8 of the Regulation ( EC) No. 1/2003 of the Council relating to the implementation of the competition rules provided for in Articles 81 and 82 of the Treaty.

The current standard of requirement makes precautionary measures very difficult to apply, and in fact they have hardly ever been applied for 15 years.