By Foo Yun Chee
BRUSSELS, July 23 (Reuters) - The European Commission will not ask Alphabet GOOGL.O, Amazon AMZN.O, Apple AAPL.O, ByteDance, Meta Platforms META.O and Microsoft MSFT.O to pay the cost of monitoring their compliance with a new digital law, the EU tech chief said on Wednesday.
Germany and European Parliament lawmakers have lobbied for a supervisory fee to be levied on Big Tech to help EU antitrust regulators better enforce the Digital Markets Act.
The European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen, who is responsible for the technology sector, said rules were always under review and she would monitor developments, but had no plans to make the companies pay despite the enormous volume of monitoring work.
"So it's always, of course, there is this possibility, but now we are not having any new proposal on that," Virkkunen told Reuters in an interview.
The landmark legislation, which has been enforced since 2023, sets out a list of dos and don'ts aimed at curbing the six companies' power and giving consumers more choice. The group of Big Tech companies, which includes Booking.com, were picked because they provide a core platform service for business users.
Proponents of a DMA supervisory fee said it should be similar to the levy imposed on big online platforms subject to another piece of legislation called the Digital Services Tax that requires companies to do more to police content on their sites.
The digital services supervisory fee amounts to 0.05% of a company's annual worldwide net income.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee; editing by Barbara Lewis)
((foo.yunchee@thomsonreuters.com; +32 2 585 2866; Reuters Messaging: foo.yunchee.thomsonreuters.com@reuters.net))
免责声明:投资有风险,本文并非投资建议,以上内容不应被视为任何金融产品的购买或出售要约、建议或邀请,作者或其他用户的任何相关讨论、评论或帖子也不应被视为此类内容。本文仅供一般参考,不考虑您的个人投资目标、财务状况或需求。TTM对信息的准确性和完整性不承担任何责任或保证,投资者应自行研究并在投资前寻求专业建议。