Facebook and other tech giants may see more regulatory scrutiny in EU
EU anti-trust officials are concerned about the market power of tech giants, and envisage more scrutiny — despite the US wanting a hands-off approach
Rome — Facebook and other tech giants may attract more regulatory scrutiny in future because of their market power, a senior EU anti-trust official said on Tuesday. Tommaso Valletti, chief economist at the European Commission’s competition unit, rejected calls by some — especially in the US — for regulators to adopt a hands-off approach to avoid stifling innovation. Unlike internet search engine Google, which has been in the EU anti-trust cross-hairs for close to a decade, Facebook has not drawn the attention of the commission, the world’s most aggressive competition enforcer. CEO Mark Zuckerberg will meet leaders of the European Parliament on Tuesday, although questioning is likely to focus on how the data of millions of Facebook users ended up in the hands of a political consultancy. So far, the German Federal Cartel Office is the only competition authority to have taken action against Facebook, but only on privacy grounds, saying it abuses its market dominance by gathering data o...
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