eu competition commissioner marie de
vestager has long been a thorn in the
side of the likes of
apple alphabet and facebook now she says
her proposals will lay down the law
for those companies while finally
creating a single market
for digital services she sat down with
our reporter janelle demillo
thank you so much for joining us today
commissioner it's a pleasure
now digitalization is of course a very
important topic in europe and with your
digital services act
you would like to see a range of rules
imposed on big tech companies like
facebook and google and apple rules like
making them share their data with
smaller rivals
what is it that you think that they're
doing that is so wrong
well the last time when when our
democracies
sort of said things you can do things
you cannot do
that was back in the digital stone age
that was the year 2000
and no one back then imagined what's
what what would be the case of our
reality today
so when you then grow up and you become
strong then of course comes
responsibility
and and we need to say to some of these
service providers you have a
responsibility
for the way you do business to make sure
that people feel
as comfortable when they are online as
well as when they are offline
and that i think is very important and
also for these businesses the
alternative
is that member states they make their
own legislation
you see that i think i understand no
worries
in so many member states right now so
you have
maybe 27 different kinds of legislation
to deal with
instead of having one european
legislation and
since i don't think that it can be any
different that legislation is coming now
i think i would still prefer to have one
set of rules to live by
but can it keep up with the breakneck
speed of tech
well not alone the digital services act
will not
uh do it alone uh i also think that we
need to say
to some of the the gatekeepers there's
there are a number of things that you
simply cannot do
so to basically regulate from the outset
to say
this abc don't do it and last but not
least
to be able to say well we don't want new
gatekeepers
to to arise we want to make sure that
also
other digital markets that they stay
competitive
so that more businesses have a fair
chance of presenting their services
to us as customers but there isn't there
also the argument
that uh it it would also serve
competition
if we were able to have the conditions
here in europe that would create the
equivalent
of a european facebook or a european
apple or a european google
why don't we have the equivalent
of those companies and could regulation
be getting in the way
well i think we we failed
20 10 20 years ago in providing a real
digital single market
because one of the reasons why the
giants are giants today
and that also goes for the chinese
giants was that they had
a single market they had a giant home
market whether they could grow the
strength
to become global companies and this is
why
one side of things is of course for
society to catch up
with the digital development but the
second thing is to provide a real
digital single market
also for european businesses to grow and
to provide a capital market with sort of
more
risk-taking uh for instance venture
capital
that comes with capital but also with
knowledge about how to
how to scale up this company because
europe is incredibly innovative
a lot of things are happening but we
need to provide businesses
with the market and with the capital
needed
is it your aim to break up these big
companies in europe
and how would that look by these
companies i mean of course the u.s tech
companies
well i'm i'm somewhat reluctant uh to
that idea
uh the first thing that would happen was
that we would spend you know
a decade in a courtroom uh the second
thing is that we don't know what would
be the outcome
it may be that we just have like more
giants
instead of having giants that are
regulated
and that serves their purpose in the
marketplace
by giving room for others i know it's
very much a u.s
debate and these are u.s companies but i
think
a a proper european approach would be to
say
you're more than welcome to be
successful but the thing is
with success comes responsibility and
this is the face that we're in now to
say well
you have to recognize that you have
powers beyond anyone else
and with that comes a responsibility
they're also
appealing a ruling that saw an eu court
overturn
your victory against apple apple will
now
not have to pay back 14.3 billion
dollars
to ireland what's going to be the
strategy this time around what argument
will you use
well of course we our sort of prime
thing is that we respect the courtroom
uh but also here respectfully we find
that the general court has made some
errors of a law
uh that we are then appealing um it is
part of the reasoning gets quite
technical to get into it uh the thing
that
that we are very happy with in the
judgment is that the courts still say
you can do what you have done you can
use us your state aid tools also when it
comes to
uh to to aid being handed out as a tax
uh benefit uh and you can do your
analysis
um then of course agreement stops uh but
now we'll see what the european court of
justice will say
given that uh this is your second term
as the competition commissioner
and you've seen you've seen some of
these setbacks
and we've learned to also recognize as
the public
how difficult it actually is to regulate
very big companies to try and prevent
monopolies
how would you rate your success as a
commissioner
well as they say it ain't over
until the fat lady sings and i have four
more years to go so
i love to pick it up when we get there
thank you very much you're welcome