META and TikTok file lawsuits against the EU

The European Union aims to establish a solid foundation for antitrust, or anti-monopoly, regulations in the technology sector based in Europe through the Digital Markets Act (DMA) legislation. To summarize, European countries intend to eliminate the problems experienced so far in one fell swoop with the DMA.

DMA LEGISLATION

Thanks to the DMA, for example, small technology firms will be enabled to compete more easily with large technology firms. Under the scope of the DMA, messaging services such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and iMessage will also be made more open. With the Digital Markets Act, these aforementioned services will become interoperable, meaning they will be able to communicate with each other. In the new era, every manufacturer will also be required to give consumers the freedom to choose their search engine, digital assistant, and browser. Furthermore, it will be mandatory to allow the deletion of any application that comes pre-installed on iOS and Android devices. 

LAWSUITS AGAINST THE EUROPEAN UNION

The European Union is also pressuring firms with the Digital Services Act (DSA), which was prepared alongside the DMA. In the new era centered on the "DSA," large platforms are required to limit disinformation, remove illegal content quickly, protect children effectively, conduct risk assessments, take steps to mitigate risks, and be subject to external audits. Firms that will be more strictly audited by the EU under the new rules are required to pay the EU to be subject to the regulation and audits, and they are not happy about this at all. 

The EU has the authority to impose audit fees on platforms to help finance its own enforcement tasks, and on this basis, Meta alone is required to pay 11 million euros for 2024. It is unknown how much of an audit fee TikTok will pay, but it has been announced that both companies are filing lawsuits against the European Union because they do not find this fee fair.

It is, of course, not yet known how these lawsuits will conclude, but the task appears quite difficult for both companies. In the final stage, the firms may end up having to pay both their own audit fees and court costs.