The European Telecommunications Ministers met in Brussels on Friday 5 December for an EU Council meeting, with a long session of discussions on the implementation of digital legislation and the adoption of conclusions on European competitiveness on the agenda.
A timely coincidence: the same morning, the European Commission announced a €120 million fine against X, Elon Musk’s social network (see other news). The decision was widely welcomed by the EU27, who stressed that the current rules must be fully implemented at a time when the Union is facing heavy pressure from the US to weaken its digital legislative framework (see EUROPE 13758/2).
“This sets a precedent. I think that this will change the way that hyper scalers behave, particularly offshore scalers, who sometimes tend to think that there is a DSA, but that it’s useless, there are never any sanctions”, welcomed the French Minister Delegate, Anne Le Hénanff, at the end of the meeting.
Without going so far as to call for an immediate salvo of other sanctions, the EU27 did discuss the effectiveness of the DSA in dealing with infringements by certain e-commerce platforms. Shocked by the recent scandal involving the sale of child pornography dolls on the Chinese platform Shein (see EUROPE 13760/16), France has sent two letters to the Commission asking it to open a formal investigation against the platform.
This request has been “heard” by Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s Executive Vice-President responsible for Technological Sovereignty, who has pledged to go “all the way to sanctions” if the infringements are proven, according to the French Minister.
France is not alone in having to deal with the influx of illegal and dangerous products, and a number of countries are already calling for a review of the system of platform liability as set out in the DSA.
Lastly, the EU27 also approved the conclusions on European competitiveness in the Digital Decade, despite a slight question mark from France on the issue of “open digital sovereignty”.
“We have a difference of opinion. As far as we’re concerned, it’s clear that we’re pushing the French European industry, so ‘in an open way’ would be ‘in a European way’”, explained the French Minister Delegate.
For France, European sovereignty must include key sectors such as cloud computing. The recent Summit in Berlin led to some political progress on this issue. Paris and Berlin put up a united front, determined to see the EU develop its own secure cloud offering, tackle the abuses of online platforms and, more broadly, reduce its dependence on the American technology giant (see EUROPE 13754/12).
Finally, the initial discussions on the digital simplification package presented by the Commission at the end of November (see EUROPE 13755/3, 13755/2) highlighted the differing opinions of the EU27 on this issue (see EUROPE 13756/20). The two legislative proposals, whose journey has only just begun, promise to be the subject of lengthy political and technical negotiations when they reach the EU Council.
See the conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/jvd (Original version in French by Isalia Stieffatre)