Good morning, everybody. My name is Ronan Murphy. I’m the Director of the Digital Innovation Initiative here at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). Thank you very much for joining us this morning. This is a quick press call on a series of articles we are running on the Digital Markets Act. We’ll be calling it the DMA throughout, just for shorthand — I’m sure you’re all aware of it, this is a very big week for the DMA because the implementation date is tomorrow, kicking in Thursday morning. We are joined today by authors of some of the articles that we have published in our series, Bill Echikson and Enrique Dans, both expressing their own views today, but both are experts in their own fields and they’re going to give us a little introduction to what they’re up to. Bill has been with us for some time as a Senior Fellow on the DII program and he is a former journalist, used to be on the other side of this particular fence. And Enrique is coming to us, I think from Madrid. Bill is in Brussels so, we do have a transatlantic element here, and another Senior Fellow here with CEPA. And Enrique has been teaching at IE University for a number of years and he’s also done a good bit of work in consulting in the private sector. So with that in mind, Bill, maybe you want to kick us off with a very brief introduction to what the series is and why we’re doing it.
Sure. Thanks, Ronan. I appreciate that. Yes, we’re doing this series, because basically, the Digital Markets Act, the DMA is a seminal moment in tech regulation. And, you know, I think a decade ago, you would have said, the tech companies were sort of like teenagers, and they really didn’t have much regulation didn’t face much regulation and now they’re grown-ups and they are going to be regulated a little bit like banks, telecoms and other industries that have tremendous impact on our lives and on the economy. There are two measures that the Europeans have put in that are really important, the Digital Services Act, and the Digital Markets Act. The Digital Services Act went into effect for everyone like last month, and it tackles illegal content. And if you’re a speech platform like Twitter, or Meta then it would be illegal speech. If you’re a marketplace, it would be dangerous products or counterfeit products, but illegal content is being regulated under the Digital Services Act. The Digital Markets Act is much narrower, it targets what the European Commission calls gatekeepers and it is really targeting seven companies, I believe, I think seven, six of whom are American, the only non-American is ByteDance, Tik Tok. And what it tries to do is put restrictions on what these companies can and cannot do. And our series, we’ve published four articles so far, has looked at the chances for success and for really opening up the marketplace. The goal for the European regulators is to increase competition. We’re not sure that’s going to happen. Because one, it’s going to be difficult to enforce. We found in the past Europe has had trouble enforcing its tech laws, two, it’s difficult to really predict – there’s a lot of unanswered questions as we wrote about this law. There’s a lot of ways in which it could make big changes or could not. What is happening now is that all the companies need to put forward compliance plans and the regulators have to say, “yes, that’s kosher,” or “that’s not kosher.” And a lot of the plans are sort of contested, and we can get into that in the questions, but they haven’t necessarily gone over very well with some of the competitors and it’s unclear whether the regulators will accept them or not. Even so what we’re seeing, and I think this is really interesting, is that we’re seeing copycats around the world already, the “Brussels Effect” — the effect of Brussels wanting to be the world’s tech regulator. It happened with the privacy GDPR law in 2018. It’s been copied around the world. And already we’re seeing a copies of this Digital Markets Act, or variations of it appear in places like Japan, the UK, Brazil, Mexico even, India, and so forth. So, I think, in the democratic world this will become the de facto standard, whether it’ll have a positive or negative impact, I think it’s too early to say. And I’m open for questions. Enrique, you had some stuff to add about I think innovation and the prospective, so please, chime in.
Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Well, first of all, thanks for the for the invitation. I would like to portray the idea of DMA as something well, let’s say, original, at least. Original in the sense that it departs a little bit from the traditional regulatory approach of the EU, we all understand that the EU normally departs from a perspective of trying to prevent everything, trying to prevent every potential, bad side effect that could come from the adoption of any technology. And we understand what’s been happening with that. I mean, the effect of that is that there’s very few innovative companies in Europe, we do not have too many leading companies in technology, or in areas where things move fast. Why is that? Well, if you have a regulator that tries to prevent everything from the very beginning, the room for rhythm, for trying to come up with innovative products or services, is much reduced to a certain extent. And now we can see that most of the innovation comes from places like you know, Silicon Valley, the US or even China, which tried to regulate with a different perspective. So, what happens here is that the DMA is trying to do something slightly different. If we think historically where this European perspective comes from, we could probably associate it with the idea of civil law. Civil law, coming from the Napoleonic or even the Roman law perspective, tries to do exactly that, it tries to protect the public, the consumers from anything that could potentially appear when something starts to happen. It is typically portrayed as being different than common law — which is the law, the law system, the law philosophy being enforced in Anglo-Saxon countries, actually in the UK in the US, because it evolved from the Anglo-Saxon, from the English original code of law. Here most things are not regulated until there’s a clear need to regulate things up, until there are clear problems happening, no one tries to regulate anything. And when regulation arises, what the judge does is try to find comparable, try to find comparable cases that happened before that technology or new situation was there, was available. So, if we see the way these systems are in the world as we know it we see that common law applies in the US, in the UK, which is the origin, and also Australia, New Zealand etc. versus civil law that is prevalent in continental Europe and Latin America for the influence of Spain and Portugal, etc. So, what happens with this? Well, when we think about the DMA, what the DMA tries to do is to apply civil law perspective, which is regulating many things and try to prevent bad side effects from happening. But bearing in mind that this environment is very fast moving, things move extremely fast, things can change very fast. So, what happens, by now we know that the approach that the common law has taken has been too slow in let’s say alarming number of times from a European perspective at least. I mean, if you realize that the side effects of certain companies that became platforms has been, for instance, electoral manipulation, or psychological problems in the youth, well, probably there’s been very little discussion and they say that things should have been well prevented, beforehand. So, by now we understand that we need an equilibrium, we need a point of equilibrium, we need to think about the potential side effects, but without ideally precluding innovators or innovative companies, but also be able to make these rules more flexible. And this is where the concept of the gatekeepers appear. If you think about the idea of the gatekeepers, the gatekeepers are the guys who designate the platforms that need to be regulated. Why? Well because they play a very strong effect on society. If these guys do something wrong, if these guys all of a sudden decide that some things that may have very, very perverse effects are okay, in their platform, we end up with very complex societal problems. And these societal problems, of course, end up creating the so-called ‘social alarm’ that places strong pressure on the regulator. So, the regulator tries to avoid being in this type of situations, they try to be able to say, “hey, we prevented, or we tried to at least prevent something like that.” So at least what I believe the DMA is, is it tries to play with that idea of equilibrium between civil law and common law. And that’s what I think is an interesting perspective, not that I am a fan of regulation. I do not think that the perspective of Brussels that Bill mentioned to be let’s say the leader in regulation is certainly sustainable actually, but well, since you have to regulate let’s try to regulate in a way that is more sensible, so to speak.
Ronan Murphy
Well, there you go. So, we’ve gone from ancient Rome to TikTok there in one fell swoop. Thanks very, very much for that Enrique. I think there’s an important point we made before we go to questions, which is that the firms that are impacted here, are not European, by the DMA, and that that cannot be avoided in conversation or discussion or writing about it. It’s American firms almost exclusively, TikTok you mentioned as well as the other one. Those companies are rightly questioning what’s going on? Why is it only us? They are big, we know this. And they’ve been very successful so that’s the sort of victims of that success. And the questions about innovation, restrictions on innovation, security concerns, all those things have been raised by these companies as considerations now, but I think it’s interesting that, as Enrique has alluded to, they’re looking for some point of equilibrium, some way of regulating, what is new territory. And it’s very early, very early in the conversation, very early in terms of what’s going to actually happen. And that’s part of the reason why we drafted this series. So, I’m going to start with — you can put your hand up or you can speak, just take yourself off mute whatever suits, anyone who’s got any questions for our speakers. Callum, you’ve got one in there? And you can ask it or I can read it out, whichever you prefer.
Callum Booth
Yeah, I can ask it. I was just wondering, kind of the effects that we think general day to day tech consumers will see from the DMA. And specifically, I was intrigued about things that kind of go beyond the commonly discussed things such as, you know, everyone’s talking about third party app stores or integration with messaging apps. What are some of the more unintended consequences or smaller things that the consumer might see from the DMA? Because my understanding of this is one of the regulations that, you know, GDPR was a lot of tick boxes. This actually looks like it can change a lot of people’s day-to-day lives in a way that maybe a lot of other tech regulations haven’t.
Ronan Murphy
I think before going to have been, I think one thing you might see is these companies can pull apps. They can pull apps, they can pull services from the EU, that could happen. And if they do not fancy apps, they can pull them, but that hasn’t happened yet so we’ll see what happens. Bill, go ahead.
Bill Echikson
I mean, there’s lots of changes that could or could not happen. I think a lot of it is still uncertain, because we haven’t seen for example, the messaging apps that you refer to. What should change is if you are a Signal user or a Skype user, you might be able to call WhatsApp. That’s what the goal is, to allow that sort of interoperability. I know that Meta has been working on that interoperability, but whether the Skypes and the Googles and the other messaging apps, Signal, Telegram, will use this interoperability remains unclear as of today. There could be lots of changes, or a few changes. I mean, you could pay for your app, and subscribe outside the Apple or Google store for the first time, potentially you could have a choice of a lot of pop up screens, I fear are going to come because they’re going to give you choices of browsers, choices of other types of search engines, you’ll be able to have a choice of a search engine in some ways. And you know, with Google, the actual search will change. And that’s been very criticized or still uncertain. Google says that a lot of its searches will go. Let’s say you’re searching for a hotel. Since Google can’t set the preference anymore and do Google Hotels or Google Travel, Google Shopping, this should go directly to a booking or another big hotel operator and will not go, unfortunately, directly to the small guy hotel who’s trying to get on top of the search results. So, I think, we’re really entering charting new grounds. And I think there are a lot of uncertainties and a lot of unintended consequences that could emerge, which is incense some of the times will reinforce some of the gatekeepers as well as force them to become, to allow the small guys, the Davids more room against the Goliath.
Enrique Dans
Yeah, I think pretty much the same in the same direction. I think this is going to be seen or to be interpreted as some sort of anti-monopoly law on steroids in trying to give people, or particularly the small companies, more ways to demonstrate that harm is being done, that they are being damaged by the selections or the way things are being done in the platform. So, I think there’s two main points that companies need to worry about. The first one is who potentially could be invoking DMA against them, small competitors who feel that the damage has been done, or things that trigger let’s say, ‘social alarm’ and all of a sudden people start commenting and they exert pressure on the regulator? And this is a very powerful tool for the regulator to say, “Hey, this is being infringed here because you are a gatekeeper.”
Bill Echikson
I think Callum, the bottom line is that it will bring changes, but it’s uncertain exactly what changes.
Callum Booth
Thank you very much
Ronan Murphy
Mackzenzie, we can see you have one and you can ask it or I can read it out, whichever you prefer.
Makenzie Holland
Yeah, just kind of broadly. I mean, there are some things that you’ve mentioned, like unintended consequences and security issues. So, I guess going off of that, what would you say are some of the biggest concerns you have with the DMA, as you watch this play out on one side? And then on the flip side, what will be some hallmarks of success that you’re going to be looking for, as this plays out? Because I know you said it’s really uncertain right now, but what will you be looking for both on the concerns that you have, and maybe some positive aspects of this legislation?
Bill Echikson
Yeah, that’s a good question, Mackenzie. I think let’s start with security. I know, Apple and Google to a lesser extent have gone out of their way to say that by allowing side loading and opening up the controls on their app stores that’s going to create security concerns. I’m not sure, still in the DMA, companies are allowed to say that they have security concerns and mitigate them. So, for example, on the App Store, there will still be a notarization — an approval mechanism for apps, interoperability for messaging where that came up as well. There still, the WhatsApp will be able to block traffic if it thinks that there’s a security concern. So, I think the issue of security is going to be one in which there’s going to be a lot of conflicts because there’s going to be a legitimate concern, but the response could actually lead to supporting what the regulators want. So, success would be if you have more competition in these fields, that there were two, three browsers, that there were lots of messaging apps that competed against each other, and innovated more – that would be success. I’m not sure the law will lead to that. But that will be, what we would be looking for, that there would be several music stores that there’ll be Spotify, Apple and others that would be able to offer consumers a better service.
Enrique Dans
I think another potential positive outcome could be being able to react fast. Having a tool that allows the regulator to act fast or to react fast when things happen. So, whoever, for instance, has an issue with security or with bad side effect, the three that create problems in this society, they have a framework they can use to react fast here, and in Europe, we like to think the technology is almost impossible to regulate. We do not need to regulate technology, we need to regulate the companies who do things with technology. So social networks are not to be necessarily regulated as such. But when we need to regulate when someone like Mark Zuckerberg creates a tool that allows social networks to be leveraged as a way to manipulate an election, for instance, and this is the problem not of the technology is the problem of the way we use technology. The goal, I believe, is to build an instrument that allows the regulator to react fast, and instead of letting the perpetrator leave with a slap in the wrist.
Ronan Murphy
So yeah, I mean, it is a market, if competition doesn’t ensue, I suppose, that’s not a success. That’s the purpose of the competition in general. And which probably brings down to Ryan, your question. I do not know — I can read out, or you can go lead yourself.
Ryan Browne
Yeah, sure. Happy to get to just repeat the question. So yeah, I’m particularly interested in the breakups question with the DMA. I know that it’s something that there was a lot of chatter about initially, when this is being proposed. And I think everybody’s sort of looking at how kind of far could that go potentially? I mean, could you see something as dramatic as a, you know, Google, YouTube split, for example, or Meta, and Facebook? Or not Facebook, but like WhatsApp and Instagram and some of those services?
Bill Echikson
Well, I think theoretically, there could be breakups, but practically speaking, I do not see them. And certainly not imminently. I think we have to go a long way before the European Commission would even consider, you have to be a repeat offender. As far as I can see, the European Commissioner who’s responsible for enforcing this has never talked about breakups. So to me, this is theoretical and far off. Before we get there, you might even see it more in the US with some antitrust cases. And I’m sure to add, I mean, Ronan, you talked about the American reaction, the targeting of American companies, victims of their own success. But we didn’t see a lot of lobbying from the US government against this law, and in fact, I think the US has, or the Biden Administration has similar concerns as the Europeans, it’s just there’s no political consensus in America, about how to go forward with this type of regulation. We can’t get a consensus in America, in Europe, they got a consensus pretty quickly but these big tech companies needed to be restrained in the sense, so, but I do not see breakups right away. Enrique, do you disagree?
Enrique Dans
Breakups are incredibly, incredibly messy, difficult to do, or to undo actually. So the thing is, most likely, what we will see is a bit more of a vigilance on the new acquisitions, whether they compromise or not the consumer choice, etc, which is something that has to be said, it’s already happening when, Lena Tang was appointed at the FTC, we all knew what was coming from there, and we can perhaps spot a little bit of European influence there, but this is probably too, I do not know too vague. It’s probably the initiative of the old country to undo the things that started with the Reagan Administration long time ago with Robert Bork and doing all the all the anti-monopoly law and making the free for all in acquisitions that now is being reversed both in the US and well, so it never happened actually in Europe.
Ronan Murphy
Bill has alluded to it as well, you can see regulators have bought a vacuum, these laws have been written these laws been written in Brussels, America is not right, the US is not doing it and as a result that it’s been imported back, the 14 states more or less have adopted the GDPR as their standard locally. And the DMA, as you say, is already having an impact in other jurisdictions. Scott, you’re up next? Do you want to call out or I’m happy to read or whatever you prefer?
Scott Roxborough
Yeah, I can, I can just ask it. Basically, my question is regarding advertising markets, because most of these companies are advertised and backed, obviously, Meta, Facebook, TikTok, and so forth. And as far as I understand it, one of the big concerns here in Europe is the fact that these the advertising markets digital advertising markets have basically been taken over by non-European companies. I’m wondering if you think, what impact you think the DMA is likely to have on advertising markets. And if you expect to see European ad tech companies emerging as alternatives to these non-European companies. We saw last week two German TV companies, aren’t the pros even launching their own new ad tech company that seems pitched exactly to be the DMA approved alternative? Do you expect this impact to be major? What expected impact do you expect to have to see on the European ad industry?
Bill Echikson
I’ll take that first. And I think the basically not much impact and potentially the opposite of what you’re saying, I think it could reinforce the gatekeepers. But let me explain why. I mean, we had GDPR. And it was also targeting, you know, Google, and Meta, the two big advertising companies. And what we saw was that it reinforced their positions, because they actually had direct contact with the consumers, they could get consent under GDPR. Whereas the European advertisers often had to go through Google, or were placing ads like retail, in the in the background, and lost that , didn’t have that direct contact with the consumers. On DMA, what I’ve been hearing is, you know, the changes that Google is making in search will make people need to spend more on advertising to make sure that they stay at the top of the search result. So, I think it could be the inverse that actually Google could get more business in this. I think, what will be interesting is where we see the real competition isn’t necessarily between the Europeans and the Americans, but between the Americans and the Americans. You see Amazon becoming a really strong advertiser. And this raises the larger question that you know, the DMA will it I mean, a lot of the main competition to these big companies is between each other. And some of the fears about the DMA is that this will restrict some of the gatekeepers from challenging the other gatekeeper. I’m preparing an article on that right now. So, I’m not sure this is going to succeed, particularly in advertising, in opening the market to European competitors.
Enrique Dans
I do think there will be changes in the in the advertising market, but not due to the DMA, specifically, due to the fact that Europe is not really accepting very well, this idea of anyone can come and ask me to sell my privacy. We do not accept from a cultural perspective, the possibility of selling our privacy because we understand privacy as a fundamental right. So, the moment when Mater arrived and said, “either you pay, or you’re selling, you’re giving me all your wealth, all your data about whatever, about your political preferences, sexual preferences, whether you’re healthy or not and I’m free to resell that to anyone…” Well, this sticks a nerve in the in the European consciousness. So most likely it will come from the revision of that change in the social consensus. We used to have advertising that was blind, that could target me only according to whether I’m wanting to be at a certain time, or passing through a certain billboard, etc. But they didn’t know who I am or what I was up to and now we have a type of advertising that tries to know everything about me and Europe is very sensitive about that. But this is not due to the DMA.
Bill Echikson
I would add Enrique I mean, Europe may be sensitive about it, but targeted advertising is so much more effective than non-targeted advertising that they know, I’m searching for something already, and they give me the ads, I’m searching for a restaurant and the restaurant ads come up. It makes a lot. It’s a lot more effective than blind advertising you were talking about.
Ronan Murphy
Yeah, I think that’s a good point Bill, because, you know, the success of RTL pro seven, or whoever decided to take on the big advertising firms will be determined by the success of the ads that run in their platforms or whatever service they provide. If businesses see results, they’ll do well. But if they do not, then whittle away. Kevin, I think we’re going to do next Kevin, and Ryan, I know you have another question. But we’ll, we’ll come back to that. If that’s okay.
Kelvin Chan
It was fine. Thanks. I will turn on my camera. Um, yeah, I just wanted to ask about the other countries that you think are kind of taking the US lead. I just wanted to get more details, because I’m in the UK, I’m in London, so I’m kind of familiar with the DMCC, but all the other places I’m unfamiliar with and just curious about how far along
Bill Echikson
I mean, we just did publish an article. I think it’s in the chat we, published it. Take a look of all the various countries, it wasn’t exhaustive, but we did get the major countries that were considering changes. Globally I would say things like, in Japan, they’re focusing really on the App Store’s that it’s really narrow DMA. UK where you are, I mean, I’ve commissioned a piece, because I hear I mean, ironically, I thought, you know, the UK would be less regulating after Brexit, but what we’re seeing the UK take on competition law is much more aggressive, even more aggressive than the DMA in many ways. And the bill under consideration, I do not think it’s passed yet, but it’s supposed to go, you know, it’s moving forward. It’s asreally DMA on steroids. In many ways. I’ve heard, you know, people are saying the Europeans are much softer. So and then there were others Brazil, Mexico, so we go through the list.
Enrique Dans
I think we’ll have to wait to know that. I mean, most countries will wait and see, or probably will take a ‘wait and see approach’ until they see the first effects or the first moments of confrontation.
Bill Echikson
True, but they’re already really still no, you’re right. They’re already really advancing types of legislation along those lines.
Ronan Murphy
Yeah, there’s definitely interest. And Ryan, you’ve asked the question there on Microsoft.
Bill Echikson
Generative AI, I think this is a really interesting question. I do not think. So there are prescriptive prohibitions on gatekeepers, you know, leveraging their own services, but I do not see this really impacting the AI sector right away because none of the gatekeepers AI businesses are considered gatekeeping businesses. We do have the AI, Europe went ahead and just passed an AI law, but overall, it’s an interesting question to me because one of the issues with Europe has been whether its search for what they call ‘digital sovereignty’ is going to be protectionist or sort of just build up European capabilities. And I think in in in Europe, there’s a sense of Microsoft just made an investment in the French Mistral, I think it was last week, and it’s been gone over pretty well. So, I think there’s a sense even in France, which is the, let’s say the leader of protectionist imagery of digital sovereignty, there’s the need to partner with the Americans and Microsoft already is invested in and providing the cloud service for the biggest European hope in generative AI.
Enrique Dans
I think the issue here is the old Microsoft versus the new Microsoft I mean, the Microsoft that we used to know Steve Ballmer, etc that was trying to fight anything that was on the open source space and the new Microsoft that even places its bets on open source and publishes things on Open Source Repositories and so on so forth. The problem in the case of Mistral that could be a case where the European Union might oppose the investment or at least they are studying it is the precedent that comes from OpenAI. And in fact, if you think about it is precisely why Elon Musk is suing, whether it’s, let’s say, a not so very well, fundamentally the case or not, but we have a company OpenAI that was, well, trying to be open source and for the good of humanity and since the Microsoft investment came in, it’s more of a private company for profit, and even subsidiary or R&D subsidiary of Microsoft. What does the European Union, what are they trying to prevent: Mistral AI going in the same way. Although we could argue that Mistral already had a strong portfolio of both open source products, and for profit products, even before the Microsoft investments, so it could be very difficult to argue that Microsoft is coming here to close the company, so to speak.
Ronan Murphy
Okay, thank you, Enrique. And Natasha, you’ve got a question. You can you can speak yourself, or I can read it?
Natasha Lomas
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m sort of wondering if you have a view on where you expect the first enforcement to fall, Apple does seem to have made itself an obvious target, obviously, in recent in recent days and weeks. But then on the other hand, Google actually has sort of, I think it’s like eight, core platform services regulate, so there’s a lot of exposure there. So kind of interested in what you think we’ll see the first action. Thanks.
Ronan Murphy
Bill answers that I should declare that this is publicly available information on our website. We’re an independent think tank, but we have received and do receive support from many of the gatekeeper companies, including Google and Apple.
Natasha Lomas
Indeed, indeed, even more interested therefore in the response, yeah.
Ronan Murphy
Yeah we talk to them sometimes, so Bill, go ahead.
Bill Echikson
So basically, I do not know, I know that, yes, Apple just got fined almost $2 billion yesterday, for something that looks a lot like what the DMA is going to enforce. You know, whether the commission will pick one company to challenge its compliance plan — I think it’s really early days, I think, you know, companies, definitely these are big-pocketed companies that are putting forward hundreds of pages of compliance plans, swamping the regulators, I think, when I talked to some lawyers, and the regulators have to come back and say, “No, that’s no good.” And I do not know how fast they’ll be able to do that. And when they come back and say, “No, that’s not good,” they probably will end up in court, and the court cases will last several years. So, I do not think there’s an immediate, there’ll be able to act so swiftly, even before the European elections, they might want to act before the European elections, but I think it’ll be difficult, because the legal process will pay out.
Enrique Dans
But I do agree with you that Apple is making itself an obvious target, not so much because of the things that their products or services, but mostly because of the reaction they had coming up with, let’s say playing the little holes, the little holes in the regulation, that allows me to say, “Yes, I’m opening this up. But if you want to use the open way, you have to you have to pay this, this, this and that, making it itself and almost impossible or, racy option. So this is trying to gain the European, the spirit of the law, so to speak — and this clearly infuriates the European regulators. So they might react faster because of that.
Bill Echikson
They might You’re right. I think the reaction to the Apple plan has been negative among other developers. When I talked to lawyers at the same time, it’ll be a real test to beat them legally. So, I do not see immediate, you know, I think we’re at the start of what’s going to turn out to be a long legal battle. Now, it’s interesting that for example, ByteDance, which is even contesting its designation as a gatekeeper is being, isn’t getting a temporary suspensive order, they have to make the changes. We do not know what changes they have in plan, because they haven’t announced anything. You know, on the one hand, Apple announced a lot of their plans and Google has done a little bit less and Meta even less. So, a lot of it’s still in mystery land.
Ronan Murphy
And there are workshops planned at the end of March, public workshops with each of the gatekeepers, which will allow them to explain things and allow us, others to ask questions. Day-long events taking place in Brussels and they can be viewed online.
Bill Echikson
I would say it would allow others to complain
Ronan Murphy
That’s probably a better way of putting it but I think a I mean, it’s a geopolitical Commission, according to the Commission’s President, so maybe ByteDance would be top of the list on that basis? Probably not. But it’s, possible. And I do think corporates, corporates out to answer the shareholders at the end of the day, and they’re going to do what they feel is in the best interests of their companies.
Bill Echikson
To be fair, Ronan, you know, ByteDance is really a challenger website to call it a gatekeeper — I do not know, that’s stretching it a bit, but there was perhaps a little…
Ronan Murphy
TikTok— the kids want TikTok. Okay. I’m just scrolling down here. It’s there anyone with any other questions?
Enrique Dans
I think the interest effects will come when we see changes. I mean, social media, for instance, is a fast-moving environment. What happens if a new platform appears and challenges TikTok or Instagram etc, and starts to create different effects. That’s when the value of the DMA could be proven. As soon as this static situation is pretty much static and the gatekeepers do not change, come, go, etc. the value of the legislation is not so clear.
Ronan Murphy
Yeah, that’s correct Enrique. And really, there’s another element to the DMA, and the DSA, I think as well, which is the commission, the role of commission as opposed to just allowing member state bodies to enforce which was the case of the GDPR. So that is a little different. So that may or may not have an impact on speed. But in the case of GDPR, the Irish Data Protection Commissioner played the lead role. I think that eight in every ten euros collected in fines, or I should say fines issued, came via the Data Protection Commissioner in Ireland today, but the collection rate, and this might be a boon to those gatekeepers, what’s actually been collected and gathered up in cash money terms, is miniscule in comparison with the fines that have been levied. And some of that is clearly because legal processes been going and challenges and so on. So there is a long path before the fines massive as they seem and sound and open the coffers of any particular member state or in this case, we think the commission would collect so that there’s a long way to go there. Any other questions? Before we before we wrap up? While thinking the series is about halfway through, it’s been alluded to so we will be publishing more and one on global contagion was just published just this morning. And there are more to come, we will also be revisiting the impact of the DMA later in the year to see, has anything actually happened? in terms of enforcement, and clearly, that’s not going to happen if you are expecting in March, April of this year, but it will be later. So, please keep an eye on what CEPA is reporting at CEPA.org for those updates. And we publish every week, a transatlantic tech policy tracker, which is very much part of what we’re about here, which is that transatlantic elements. Okay, any other questions before we wrap up? Anything to conclude Bill or Enrique? Okay. Thank you to Bill and Enrique for joining us today and thank you to all of you who attended and for your questions. Stay in touch. Thanks again.
Bill Echikson
Thank you. Thanks, Ronan and Enrique.
All opinions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the position or views of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis.
