Global collaboration ‘necessary’ in the fight against Big Tech, says EU antitrust chief

The architect of landmark EU antitrust rules has called upon governments to collaborate on a common approach to curb the power of large technology corporations.

Vestager, who has handed out billions of euros in fines to Alphabet's Google and launched investigations into Apple, Amazon and Meta Platform's alleged anticompetitive behaviour, said there was global agreement on the issues raised by large digital platforms.

"This debate is no longer a hot topic amongst competition practitioners but it has strong political attention," she said in a recent conference.

"Close cooperation will be necessary because we will not be short of work and we will not be short of novel services or practices to look at."

Earlier this week, the European Commission accused Apple of restricting competition by preventing mobile wallet app developers from accessing the necessary hardware and software on Apple devices. Moreover, the Commission has recently cleared a major hurdle on the way to passing the Digital Markets Act into a EU law, with the goal of bringing competition and fairness back to online platform markets.

In Vestager's view, antitrust watchdogs around the world should work together to ensure similar regulations are put in place at a global level.

"It goes without saying that the more we, as an international competition community, are able to harmonise our approach, the less opportunity there will be for global tech giants to exploit enforcement gaps between our jurisdictions," she said.

Currently, Big Tech is under fire in South Korea, India, Australia and even some US states, which are actively investigating the business practices of companies including Google, Facebook and Apple