After the Internal Market Committee meeting earlier this week, European Commissioner for Internal Market Thierry Breton spoke to the European Parliament’s Industry Committee on Thursday 1 October for a structured dialogue with MEPs (see EUROPE 12569/6). This was an opportunity for him to present his work programme for the coming months, particularly in the digital sector.
The Digital Services Act is becoming clearer
Among his priorities, of course, is the Digital Services Act, announced for 2 December. “We need adequate regulatory tools to supervise and control, in particular, very large platforms, which have become systemic or, to use the 2008 neologism, that are ‘too big to care’”. He also added: “These players, who are no longer mere hosting providers, but also integrated diversified service providers, must be able to accept and adapt to our rules”.
On 1 October, the Committee on Legal Affairs validated the relevant report prepared by Tiemo Wölken (S&D, Germany) (see EUROPE 12569/5).
Several documents have already started to circulate, including a draft impact assessment to support the proposal for ex ante regulation for platforms acting as “gatekeepers”, and a draft black/grey/white list of unfair practices.
The first tells us that the Commission intends to tackle the following gatekeepers: online intermediation services (marketplaces, app stores, and social networks), search engines, operating systems and cloud services.
The second proposes to prohibit the following practices: exclusive use of data, preferential display or ranking, pre-installation by the platform of its own applications, and the practice of preventing a business user from directing consumers to other offers potentially more interesting than those provided by the platform (anti-steering). It also provides for an obligation to notify all mergers.
Data and cybersecurity on the agenda this year
In his comments, the Commissioner also mentioned two other “regulatory pillars”: data and cyber security.
On the first point, he mentioned the main lines of the regulation on European data governance, announced for 14 October, which will be followed next year by a “data law”. He stressed that the governance regulation would facilitate “the emergence of a new structure for managing personal and commercial data in the information space. (...) It also aims to facilitate access to high-quality public sector data, such as statistics and geospatial data, whose free use and re-use can be crucial for SMEs”.
On the second point, which is due to be the subject of a communication on 15 December, Thierry Breton said the Commission is working on the creation of a European cyber shield as part of an ambitious revision of the Network Security Directive (NIS). The aim, he said, was to propose more harmonised rules for companies providing essential services in the internal market. He also referred to the joint cyber-unit, which is “to be announced soon”.
5G network connectivity and security
The European Commissioner also addressed the issue of connectivity, following a draft recommendation on the subject (see EUROPE 12563/12). He stressed the importance of putting an end to current blank reception zones via 5G, fibre and space.
He took the opportunity to return to the subject of infrastructure security, welcoming the fact that the majority of Member States are using the toolbox set up by the EU (see EUROPE 12414/7).
The day before, a senior US diplomat visiting Brussels was particularly pleased that many European countries (Czech Republic, Poland, Sweden, Estonia, Romania, Denmark, Greece, Finland, Luxembourg, Latvia, France, United Kingdom, Slovenia) have joined the ‘Clean Network’ which excludes Huawei from 5G network providers, and said that Germany is moving “in the right direction”. DSA links: https://bit.ly/30nW0iS and https://bit.ly/2HG82xu (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)