EU denies picking on US tech giants, says US also tackling monopolisation

Foo Yun Chee

Fri, Mar 7, 2025, 8:36 AM 2 min read

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Europe's caller tech regularisation aims to support integer markets unfastened and is not targeted astatine U.S. tech giants, EU antitrust and tech chiefs told U.S. congressmen, reminding them that U.S. enforcers person successful caller years besides cracked down connected these companies.

The comments by EU antitrust main Teresa Ribera and EU tech main Henna Virkkunnen came aft U.S. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan and Scott Fitzgerald, president of the subcommittee connected the administrative state, regulatory betterment and antitrust demanded clarifications connected the Digital Markets Act (DMA).

"The DMA does not people U.S. companies," Ribera and Virkkunnen wrote successful a associated missive dated March 6 to Jordan and Fitzgerald seen by Reuters.

"It applies to each companies which fulfil the intelligibly defined criteria for being designated arsenic a gatekeeper successful the European Union irrespective of wherever they are headquartered," they said.

Ribera and Virkkunnen besides dismissed disapproval that the DMA hinders innovation.

"By preventing gatekeepers from engaging successful unfair practices vis-à-vis smaller companies, the DMA keeps the doorway unfastened to the adjacent question of innovation successful captious integer markets," they said.

They pointed to akin concerns of unfair practices that led to U.S. antitrust investigations and lawsuits filed nether the archetypal Trump medication and different caller actions against Alphabet's Google, Amazon, Apple and Meta Platforms.

Ribera and Virkkunnen besides rejected claims that EU antitrust fines are a signifier of European taxation connected American companies. U.S. President Donald Trump successful a memorandum past period threatened to enforce tariffs against countries which enforce fines connected U.S. companies.

"The nonsubjective of DMA enforcement, arsenic successful immoderate different portion of EU law, is to guarantee compliance – not to contented fines. Possible sanctions, besides communal to U.S. laws and regulations, are not an extremity successful themselves but a prerequisite for credible engagement," they said.

(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee, Editing by Louise Heavens)