Tech giants risk breakup as EU unveils tougher rules to curb power

US and other major tech platforms that treat their own services more favorably, at the expense of rivals, could be forced to sell businesses and pay billion-dollar fines under strict rules unveiled by the European Union.
 

Under the EU’s new Digital Markets Act, companies deemed to be so-called “gatekeepers” won’t be allowed to rank their offerings above rivals on their own platforms, or use competitors’ data to compete with them, according to the new regulation released on Tuesday.
 

Companies like Amazon.com Inc, Apple Inc. or Alphabet Inc.’s Google could face fines of as much as 10 per cent of their revenue in Europe if they don’t comply, while a company that has repeatedly breached the rules could face orders to divest businesses, confirming a Bloomberg report on Monday. Gatekeepers will also need to inform regulators about smaller acquisitions that would otherwise fall below traditional merger review thresholds.
 

The separate Digital Services Act could also foresee fines as high as 6 per cent of revenue for social media platforms if they don’t comply with orders to remove terror propaganda or other illegal posts, along with other obligations such as carrying out reviews of systemic risks to their sites. The UK, which left the bloc earlier this year, also announced similar rules on Tuesday.
 

The regulations are some of the strictest set of technology rules to be proposed by the EU and aim to quash bad behavior by powerful platforms they see as posing a threat to the bloc’s society and economic markets