BRUSSELS, Oct 1 — EU leaders will today back plans to impose unprecedented rules against big tech, promising to make Europe a global rule-maker against the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon.

The leaders meeting at a summit in Brussels are setting the groundwork for an EU “Digital Services Act”, a massive legal proposal expected in December that will overhaul the regulation of internet platforms.

In prepared draft conclusions from the two-day summit, seen by AFP, the leaders stress that “to be digitally sovereign” the EU must “reinforce its ability to define its own rules, to make autonomous technological choices.”

The leaders will commit that “at the international level, the EU will leverage its tools and regulatory powers to help shape global rules and standards.”

At the heart of the proposals, currently in preparation for December by the European Commission, will be the notion that US tech giants have become internet “gatekeepers” that must be given specific rules and undergo stricter oversight.

“Perhaps these platforms have become too big to care,” said Thierry Breton this week, an EU commissioner who will be closely involved in the proposal.

“That’s something that we must deal with, just as we did with banks. We’re going to have to acquire the necessary regulatory tools to control those players,” he told MEPs.

The long-trailed plans have sparked a lobbying frenzy in Brussels, with big tech eager to dampen the resolve of European regulators to limit their reach.

According to EU documents seen by AFP, Google’s search engine, Amazon’s shopping platform and the Apple app store could potentially fall under the new “gatekeeper” designation.

In one of the documents, Brussels blacklists practices used by big tech that could face bans or strict limitations, including an order that they share their highly valuable data with businesses using their platforms.

The plans could also include bans on the exclusive pre-installation of apps, bans on preferential ranking in search results or news feeds and bans on forcing apps to use the Apple or Google app store for customer payments.

If confirmed, these rules would force tech giants into practices that major competition cases — which often take years — have so far failed to do.

Over the past decades, the EU has pushed a series of such cases, which have so far resulted in billions of euros in fines against Google, but have left critics unsatisfied by the lack of meaningful change in behaviour by tech giants.

‘Define own rules’

The main intention of the Digital Services Act will be to update legislation that dates back to 2004, when many of today’s internet giants either did not exist or were in their infancy.

Another key component will be to give the EU’s antitrust authority new powers to ensure that the likes of Facebook or Google do not dominate new markets.

The European Commission’s end-of-year proposal will then enter a painful negotiation with the European Parliament as well as the 27 member states.

Euro MPs have already tabled their own versions of a Digital Services Act, which has thousands of amendments and input from a wide range of lobbyists eager to shape the outcome.

The Digital Services Act “should ensure that companies that are established outside the EU, that target our market, our consumers, our users, must abide with our rules,” said the social democrat MEP Alex Agius Saliba, a leading parliamentary voice on the issue. — AFP