The EU has raised the stakes in its efforts to curb Big Tech by threatening to break up companies that repeatedly engage in anti-competitive behaviour in the first overhaul of the bloc’s rules for internet businesses for two decades.
A draft of the new Digital Markets Act warned technology companies that break competition rules will face fines of up to 10 per cent of their global revenues. Brussels also warned the EU would move to break up any technology company that is fined three times within five years.
Margrethe Vestager, the commissioner in charge of competition and digital policy, said the EU would not hesitate to “impose structural remedies, divestitures, that sort of thing”.