In the UK, a new regulator will appear in the foreseeable future, whose activity will be to supervise technology giants, including Amazon and Google.
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The media, citing anonymous sources familiar with the details of the authorities’ plans for the largest players in the technology sector, report that the new supervisory authority will be a division of the country’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The regulator will receive powers, the scale and level of which allows for the implementation of control measures on the fact of the activities of technology giants.
The bill on digital markets, competition, and consumers provides that the new regulator, the creation of which is a matter of the near future, will control the functioning of only those firms whose turnover worldwide is at least 25 billion pounds or from 1 billion pounds and more in the British market.
The initiative of the British legislators provides that the supervisory authority will control, in a legal sense, companies that are characterized by being in a position of entrenched power in at least one digital market. Those firms that ignore the rules and regulations established in relation to them will face sanctions in the form of fines in the amount of up to 10% of their global turnover.
Officials who spoke with the media reported that the bill on the creation of a new regulator will be published by the end of April. The representative of the government said that this initiative will be submitted to the parliament in the near future, but did not talk about specific dates.
The implementation of the British legislative initiative is taking place during a period of the simultaneous increase in the attention of regulators to large technology companies around the world. The CMA last week, after much discussion, forced Google to approve a permit allowing developers to use third-party payment systems for transactions within the application.
Ann Pope, director of antitrust Law at the CMA, said that the technology giant’s full control over in-app payments unfairly restricts developers who are forced to use the Google Play billing system without an alternative, which reduces competition and increases the distance between product creators and customers.
As we have reported earlier, UK FinTechs Seek Government Support After SVB Collapse.
