The European Parliament has adopted a report assessing the EU’s competition policy, a critical tool for defending its values. The message is clear: enforce, enforce, enforce.
There has been constant pressure from the Trump administration towards the European Commission, urging the legislator to soten its stance - especially on the Digital Markets Act (DMA), an EU law which reins in Big Tech’s dominance.
This law stops Google from favouring its own services or Meta from merging Facebook and WhatsApp data. However despite these protections, the latest report slams the DMA’s implementation as "suboptimal."
Stéphanie Yon-Courtin MEP (Renaissance, FR), the report’s author, demands systematic, rigorous and independent enforcement:
"Competition decisions must be free from politics. Full stop. In every EU country, national competition authorities stand apart from government. Not at EU level. Here, it's the Commission, a political body, that holds the pen. That's how competition decisions get politicised. That shouldn't be. My report calls for assessing whether competition powers should leave the Commission altogether, for a truly independent authority. One that wouldn't flinch when Trump calls”.
Yon-Courtin’s report also calls for more staff to enforce competition policy as well as a “DMA fee” to ensure the regulator has stable, independent source of funding.