The Blog of the European Association for Digital Transition
Following 15 months of negotiations, we’ve got white smoke. On Thursday, March 24, the technicians and experts at the European Parliament, the Commission and the Council reached an agreement on the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Below, we provide a summary of this new regulation by looking at five questions.
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How can we prevent the big Internet platforms from killing off local businesses, with the devastating consequences their disappearance would have on neighbourhoods? The European Association for Digital Transition, in collaboration with the digital newspaper El Confidencial, recently organised a debate on this question in Madrid during the second edition of its campaign, ‘Save your zone’.
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For the second consecutive year, the European Association for Digital Transition is launching the ‘Save your zone’ campaign, an effort to raise awareness on the diminishing competition in business and the effects this has on various levels, such as activity in neighbourhoods, employment, and tax revenues.
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Since the U.S. presidential election and the Brexit referendum, both in 2016, the risk to Western democracies from fake news has been part of the global political debate. But in the twenty-first century, five years of technology is a long time. And the dangers have grown, becoming more sophisticated. While platforms and the authorities barely manage to lessen the spread of fake news on platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp, new risks are starting to be tangible within the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In 2021, we should no longer trust a video with inflammatory statements from a political leader: it might have been created with AI. And these deep fakes are just one of the manifestations of the phenomenon we find ourselves in.
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On Monday, May 17, World Telecommunication and Information Society Day (WTISD) is once again being celebrated. The commemoration is the result of a 2006 resolution from the UN General Assembly. Its purpose? To promote knowledge on the possibilities for development and economic and social prosperity from the Internet and other information technologies.
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The complex debate on taxation of large Internet platforms affects all levels, from the large institutions involved in global governance – such as the G20 and IMF – to city councils in cities that have around two million people, such as Barcelona. For a while now the Catalan city council has been working to implement a tax on home delivery of online purchases. The measure is after an essential objective: to defend the traditional commercial structure and small businesses from the rise of e-commerce, a market dominated by multinational platforms such as Amazon and AliExpress.
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Surely the scene is familiar to you. To give a gift, the discounts or just in daily life, we turn to e-commerce, so comfortable and tempting in these strange times when crowds make us feel apprehensive. And once we decide to buy ‘online’, the most reliable alternative is Amazon, with its huge offer, competitive prices and, above all, its efficient delivery system.
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The Christmas holidays are over, extended in Spain to Three Kings Day, and the yearly ritual now heads directly to the sales season. A few years back it was a big social and economic event; now, in part because of the effect from Black Friday, it’s lost some relevance but is still marked on the calendar in red for many businesses.
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The serious discrepancies between the European Parliament and the Council, chaired this six-month period by Germany, confirm what was already felt: It will not be easy to implement the historic EU post-COVID reconstruction agreement, closed last July by the heads of government. This is bad news for everyone, but especially for the countries most in need of this shot of investment, such as Italy and Spain.
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On July 1, Germany took over the current presidency of the Council of the European Union. Every six months, one of the 27 member states holds this rotating responsibility. And every six months, this presidency designs a roadmap with priorities and objectives it considers crucial to develop during the term.
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