German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has urged Europe to seize control of its data from Silicon Valley tech giants, in an intervention that the Financial Times says highlights the EU’s growing willingness to challenge the US dominance of the digital economy. The paper reports that the German chancellor said the EU should claim “digital sovereignty” by developing its own platform to manage data and reduce its reliance on the US-based cloud services run by Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
The FT states that her speech, at an employers’ conference in Berlin, shows the extent to which the information economy is emerging as a battleground in the EU-US trading relationship. It also highlights the concern in European capitals that the EU could be weakened by the market dominance of the big US tech companies, particularly in the business of storing, processing and analysing data.
Margrethe Vestager, the EU’s competition chief who will also oversee EU digital policy, told the Financial Times last month that she was examining whether large internet companies could be held to higher standards of proof in competition cases, as part of a tougher line on dominant companies, such as Google. Read more: Financial Times (paywall)
German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has urged Europe to seize control of its data from Silicon Valley tech giants
- Region:
- Europe
- Series:
- Regulatory Watch
