No plans to get Big Tech to pay digital law compliance costs, EU tech chief says

By Foo Yun Chee

BRUSSELS, July 23 (Reuters) - The European Commission will not ask Alphabet GOOGL.O, Amazon AMZN.O, Apple AAPL.O, ByteDance, Meta Platforms META.O and Microsoft MSFT.O to pay the cost of monitoring their compliance with a new digital law, the EU tech chief said on Wednesday.

Germany and European Parliament lawmakers have lobbied for a supervisory fee to be levied on Big Tech to help EU antitrust regulators better enforce the Digital Markets Act.

The European Commission Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen, who is responsible for the technology sector, said rules were always under review and she would monitor developments, but had no plans to make the companies pay despite the enormous volume of monitoring work.

"So it's always, of course, there is this possibility, but now we are not having any new proposal on that," Virkkunen told Reuters in an interview.

The landmark legislation, which has been enforced since 2023, sets out a list of dos and don'ts aimed at curbing the six companies' power and giving consumers more choice. The group of Big Tech companies, which includes Booking.com, were picked because they provide a core platform service for business users.

Proponents of a DMA supervisory fee said it should be similar to the levy imposed on big online platforms subject to another piece of legislation called the Digital Services Tax that requires companies to do more to police content on their sites.

The digital services supervisory fee amounts to 0.05% of a company's annual worldwide net income.