EU faces uphill battle to rein in big tech

The EU's landmark curbs on how tech titans do business online kick in from Thursday, but just how far Brussels succeeds in bringing the giants to heel will hinge on bitter battles that still lie ahead.

Wielding a tough new legal arsenal, Brussels is determined to force a change in behaviour by the world's biggest tech firms, to create a more competitive online field that allows smaller players to flourish.

The bloc's new Digital Markets Act (DMA) will usher in a long list of do's and don'ts for six so-called "gatekeepers" designated by the European Union: Apple, Amazon, Google owner Alphabet, TikTok parent ByteDance, Meta and Microsoft.

"What we need right here from gatekeepers is changing behaviour," the bloc's competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager told AFP in an interview on the eve of the law coming into force.

The big six will have to tell Brussels about any buyout, large or small, as well as provide European users with more choices when they pick web browsers or search engines.

Users should also soon be able to send messages between apps, for example from Meta's WhatsApp to services such as Signal or Telegram.

But experts warn enforcement represents a mighty challenge, and the EU already faces legal challenges, including from Apple, Meta and TikTok.

"Getting big tech to comply with these new rules will be an enormous task," Bram Vranken, researcher at Corporate Europe Observatory, told AFP.

"Even now, almost eight years after the adoption of the GDPR" — the EU's mammoth data protection law — "the EU is still struggling in getting Facebook to respect the privacy of millions of people in Europe," Vranken added.

Brussels slapped a 1.2-billion-euro ($1.3 billion) fine on Meta over data privacy...