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EU: Vestager warns against new regulations for internet companies

By  |  June 18, 2015

The European Union should be wary of creating new regulations targeting large internet companies like Google and Facebook, the bloc’s antitrust chief Margrethe Vestager said Thursday, arguing that the bloc should seek to enforce existing antitrust laws to keep big companies in check.

Senior EU officials have floated a plan to create a new EU-wide regulator for a swath of mainly U.S.-based Internet companies, amid concerns that some of these firms are obstructing access to key online markets, according to an internal document seen by The Wall Street Journal.

Speaking at an event in London, Ms. Vestager said it would be “tricky” to design EU regulation targeting the various large Internet firms like Facebook, Amazon.com and eBay because it was hard to establish what they had in common besides “facilitating something.”

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