EU lawmakers and countries could reach agreement by the end of June on proposed technical rules that would force online platforms to better regulate the internet despite differences in their approaches, lawmakers leading the talks said on Monday.

The Digital Services Act (DSA) proposed by EU antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager forces Amazon, Apple, Alphabet Inc subsidiary Google and Facebook owner Meta to do more to deal with its Illegal content on the platform or face a fine turnover of up to 6% globally.

Vestager’s proposal, the first of its kind in the world, needs the consent of EU countries and lawmakers to become law.

“I’m optimistic that we can reach a deal by the end of June,” MP Christel Schaldemose said in an interview.

Her comments came ahead of a second meeting on the issue with French digital affairs minister Cedric O and EU industry chief Thierry Breton on Tuesday. The third is scheduled for March 15.

Schaldemose said lawmakers want to expand what online platforms have to do, ban dark patterns that mislead people into giving personal data to online companies, and continue to keep companies regulated in their locations.

“We go into the business model of the platform. The committee is reluctant to go that far,” she said, citing the dark mode divide.

“The council wants the ban to be only for online markets. The council wants to ban all platforms.”

Countries such as Ireland, where Apple, Facebook and Google have headquarters in Europe, and Luxembourg, where Amazon is headquartered, should continue to regulate these companies on a “country of origin” basis, Schaldemose said.

“We stick to the country of origin principle, not the Council,” she said, adding that the European Commission could also have a say, and EU countries wanted a bigger role for the EU executive.

EU lawmakers also want to ban targeted advertising to minors and ads based on sensitive data such as sexual or political orientation in order to comply with EU privacy rules, while EU countries have taken a less stringent stance overall.

Complete News Source : The Hindu