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Sven Giegold, state secretary in charge of competition policy at
Germany's economy ministry, said such a move would help EU
antitrust regulators better enforce the Digital Markets Act
(DMA) which the six companies have to comply with on March 7.
The landmark rules set out a list of requirements for the six
companies, such as allowing rival services to inter-operate with
their services, as well as letting business users promote their
offer and conclude contracts with their customers outside their
platforms.
The six companies are prohibited from unfairly ranking their own
services and products above their rivals on their platforms or
preventing users from un-installing any pre-installed software
or app on their devices.
"The (European) Commission needs additional resources for
enforcement," Giegold told a conference organised by the German
antitrust agency.
"We propose for the DMA we should introduce the same fee
financing as under the DSA (Digital Services Act)," he said.
Under the DSA, which requires Big Tech to do more to police
content on their platforms, 20 very large online platforms,
including Meta, Google, Apple, TikTok, and also two very large
online search engines, have to pay a supervisory fee amounting
to 0.05% of their annual worldwide net income.
The DMA does not have such a supervisory fee.
Giegold also said EU antitrust enforcers should focus more on
key sectors with an international aspect to help European
companies compete better globally.
"Next week we will be formally submitting a concrete German
proposal that is for the EU level. We would like to see this
proposal in the reforms of Mario Draghi and Enrico Letta," he
said, referring to two former prime ministers of Italy tasked by
the Commission to come up with ways to revive the EU's
competitiveness.
He said key areas for EU businesses are raw materials, energy,
transport, semiconductors and cloud computing.
(Reporting by Foo Yun Chee. Editing by Jane Merriman)
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