Lawmakers in various European states and the EU as a whole have been scrutinizing big tech companies for the past few years, proposing laws to prevent abuse of their dominant market position. The latest proposal this time concerns globally popular communication platforms. The EU wants to connect them with their smaller competitors.
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The new proposal is part of a wider legislative amendment called the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which aims to enable more competition in the technology world. European Parliament lawmakers want big communication platforms like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger and others to work with smaller messaging apps, similar to how Google's Messages and Apple's iMessage can send and receive messages between users Androidua iOS.
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This proposal, if the DMA regulation is approved and translated into law, will apply to every company operating in EU countries that has at least 45 million monthly active users and 10 thousand annual active corporate users. For failure to comply with the DMA (if it becomes law), large technology companies such as Meta or Google could be fined up to 10% of their global annual turnover. It could be up to 20% for repeated violations. The DMA regulation, which also wants online platforms to give users a choice about the internet browsers, search engines or virtual assistants they use on their devices, is now awaiting approval of the legal text by the European Parliament and the European Council. It is not known at this time when it could become law.
