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EU: US Senator accuses Europe of using antitrust cases to disguise tech interests

By  |  January 10, 2016
A Democratic senator has accused Europe of using antitrust cases to disguise its own technology interests, the latest exchange in an ongoing tussle between American tech giants and European governments over privacy.

Virginia’s Mark Warner locked horns with former European digital commissioner Neelie Kroes, who appeared alongside him at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The senator questioned the motives behind the EU’s plans for pan-European data privacy rules.

“The actions of the EU may have been industrial policy saying, ‘We want to try and support more European tech in the guise of anti-trust’, or for security concerns, saying, ‘We have to locate servers in certain places in terms of locating information’,” he said.

“That is more about 20th century nationalistic policy than about technology.”

Kroes headed the EU’s high-profile case against Microsoft, among others, during her decade-long tenure at the European commission, a case that set a precedent for the current antitrust investigation against Google. Microsoft was eventually fined a total of €1.64bn for anticompetitive practices.

Full content: The Guardian

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