Brussels, 24/11/2014 (Agence Europe) - It is “important to see the Google case is what it is, a competition case”, the European Commissioner for Competition, Margrethe Vestager, said in an interview with EUROPE on the sidelines of the ALDE Congress in Lisbon, on Friday 21 November.
Last week, two members of the European Parliament, Ramon Tremosa i Balcells (ALDE, Spain) and Andreas Schwab (EPP, Germany) said that in the absence of satisfactory decisions regarding the investigation into Google, which is accused of abuse of dominant position in online searches, the Commission should consider a regulation on dominant search engines, along the lines of the regulation in place on computerised booking systems.
“If you look at the market shares, it would be a 'Google regulation' because it has the absolute top share in the search machine market in Europe. It is important to take the case for what it is, a competition case, there are complaints, we are looking into them”, Vestager explained.
Since then, the MEPs have gone even further. This week will see a debate and a vote at the EP on a draft resolution on the digital single market. The draft text of the EPP, which is still under negotiation but reportedly has the support of the S&D, calls upon the Commission to “consider proposals with the aim of unbundling search engines from other commercial services as one potential long-term solution” to allow web traffic to be dealt with under similar competition conditions. The draft text was published for the first time by the Financial Times on Friday evening and makes no specific reference to Google.
The draft text of the ALDE, on the other hand, does refer to Google. It calls upon the Commission to close the Google dossier if it wishes to remain credible with regard to its digital agenda strategy. It also urges the Commission to submit any new proposals to market tests and not to hesitate to threaten to issue statements of objections.
On Monday, Tremosa and Schwab stressed that they were not “ideologically opposed to Google”, but that they are against “monopolies. We want a level playing field in the digital market. Unbundling is one of the ideas, but we have proposed several ideas of solutions, including a rotation mechanism”.
Kaja Kallas (ALDE, Estonia) explained to EUROPE during the ALDE Congress that a further aim was to decide on what basis and on the grounds of what argument to call for the unbundling of Google's activities, adding that it was a question of deciding whether Google can be described as infrastructure.
Before leaving office, Vestager's predecessor, Joaquin Almunia, explained that he had asked Google to improve its proposed commitments. As things stand, such an improvement is “neither on nor off the table”, according to Vestager, who explained that she had not yet met the American giant.
“The case has already taken five years, it is important for me to find a way to handle it in order not to add year on year on year on year. What you will hear from the complainants is that they fear that the longer the case takes, the longer they will experience the things they are complaining about. This is why it is important to get an overview of the state of play as to where the case is right now, in order to have a structured approach on how to proceed”, the Commissioner told us.
In the document they presented last week, Schwab and Tremosa quote an Advocate General of the Court of Justice of the EU, who criticised the Commission for having used the settlement procedure too readily. “I do respect the decisions of my predecessor and from what I've learned, it is several concrete decisions in each case. It depends on the participants, whether they are seeking a settlement, but it also depends on the harm done, at least in my opinion. I think that it is very important to take each case on its own, rather than a general principle”, said Vestager. (EL)