According to the proposals of the European Commission, attention will be paid in particular to companies such as Booking Holdings, which owns the Booking.com service, and Airbnb
The European Union is optimistic about the prospect of resuming constructive relations with the USA to regulate the activities of large American technology companies. This was stated by Margrethe Westager, Deputy Head of the European Commission (EC) and Commissioner for Competition and Digital Economy Development, in an interview posted in the Financial Times on Monday.
“We have a real chance to renew relations with the USA [in this area] with the coming to power of a new administration”, – led by the elected American President Joseph Biden, Westager believes. – “I think it is very important that we have a strong and good partnership when it comes to [regulating large technology companies]”, – she said.
At the same time, according to the European Commissioner, Europe needs to build a digital future and not just tighten the rules against technology giants. According to the EC’s proposals, which will be released next week, close attention will be paid in particular to companies such as Booking Holdings, which owns Booking.com, an online hotel booking service with an annual revenue of $15 billion, and Airbnb, taking into account the interests of their smaller competitors. This will be an attempt to respond quickly to market prospects “in addition to what is already being actively done [in the EU] to enforce competition law,” Westager said.
Brussels intends to oblige major technology companies such as Amazon and Google to share huge amounts of customer data with their competitors – smaller companies – under the Digital Services Act (DSA), the publication said at the end of September.