Germany and France have complained that the EU is not tough enough on Big Tech and called on regulators to make it harder for the likes of Google and Facebook to pursue killer acquisitions.
A paper signed by Bruno Le Maire, France’s finance minister; Peter Altmaier, Germany’s minister for economic affairs; and Mona Keijzer, the Dutch economic affairs minister, said the EU’s flagship proposals for future technology regulation, the Digital Markets Act, lacked “ambition”.
The paper, which has yet to be published, but which has been seen by the Financial Times, called for the EU to strengthen and “speed up” merger scrutiny, particularly when it comes “to strategies of platform companies consisting in systematically buying up nascent companies in order to stifle competition”.