The President of the ALDE Group at the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, is pursuing his crusade against Facebook. After directly criticising the boss of Facebook during a public hearing at the European Parliament at the end of May (see EUROPE 12025), Mr Verhofstadt, from Belgium, appealed for a new model of digital governance in a column published on Friday17 August.
Guy Verhofstadt explains “The recent hearing of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the European Parliament did not reassure, quite the opposite, which is why Europe needs a radical new approach to the internet and regulation of big tech companies who have total power to set the parameters of deciding what news and other information we all consume”.
In his column “Taming the Tech Monster”, he advocates taking a number of European-level measures. The objective is to respond to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the proliferation of fake news and misinformation campaigns, as well as to regain control of the Internet from the social media companies and Internet platforms that are facilitating the erosion of democracy.
Among these measures, Guy Verhofstadt suggests proportionate anti-trust measures, the creation of a digital imprint for every political advert and the application of guarantees to prevent personal data being obtained without consent. The liberal democrat is also suggesting that an EU level agency, akin to the US Federal Communications Commission, is set up to assist in the creation of a genuine European Single Market for tech companies and that a European investigator, similar to Robert Mueller in the US, is appointed to investigate foreign interference in European democracies. (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)