2021-05-29 19:40:58
In battle for privacy, antitrust watchdogs throw their hat in the ring
Europe’s flagship privacy standards, mandating how companies collect, store and use people’s data, got off to a stuttering start. But as the rules turn 3 years old on Tuesday, enforcement is finally on the way.
It’s just not coming from the bloc’s privacy regulators.
The European Union’s powerful competition authorities — both in Brussels and in national capitals — are elbowing their way into the world of data protection. Their focus is a small number of mostly American tech companies that have garnered so much control over reams of people’s social media messages, online search queries and digital shopping purchases.
The land grab has given these antitrust agencies an increasingly large say over privacy rules — albeit one framed around how dominant companies may abuse their market power over data, not around upholding people’s fundamental data protection rights.
It is also shifting the power dynamics — three years into the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR — as questions swirl about the ability of the region’s privacy agencies to enforce rules that have become the de facto global standard. So far, Google has faced the largest fine after the French privacy watchdog doled out a €50 million levy in 2019. Facebook’s WhatsApp messaging service is also on deck for a penalty of up to €50 million later this year. Almost all of the other fines have barely hit the million-euro mark.
Yet where once companies feared how these data protection watchdogs would enforce Europe’s tough privacy rules (including hefty penalties), firms are increasingly worried about how antitrust regulators are homing in on data — and the potential abuse of such digital information — as the front line in their efforts to enforce global competition norms.
That’s blurring the lines between antitrust and data protection, with competition watchdogs so far coming out on top because of their decades of legal enforcement experience compared with the relatively limited know-how within Europe’s privacy agencies. Both sets of regulators across Europe have openly discussed working with each other to tackle joint problems.
“Privacy and competition will be one of the big topics of the year,” Isabelle de Silva, France’s competition chief, told POLITICO. Her agency is currently assessing several cases that question Big Tech’s use of people’s data. “I think this will be a very big thing to follow.”
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