The company of American billionaire Elon Musk, however, remains covered by the other new European legislation to regulate the internet, the Digital Services Regulation (DSA) which governs content posted online.
The social network X is not currently affected by the stricter competition rules imposed by new EU legislation on a handful of tech giants, the European Commission announced on Wednesday.
The Digital Markets Regulation (DMA) aims to monitor and stem abuse of dominant position to better protect the emergence and growth of start-ups in Europe and improve the choice offered to users.
Since this year, it has applied to certain services of five American giants – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft –, to the social network TikTok, owned by the Chinese group ByteDance, as well as to the Dutch hotel reservation platform Booking.
The regulation imposes on these companies, designated by Brussels because they are considered essential for users, a series of constraints in order to prevent unfair practices which risk ousting or restricting competition.
The DMA can apply in principle to groups available in at least three European countries, which exceed 75 billion euros in market capitalization or 7.5 billion in sales in Europe, and have at least 45 million active end users and 10,000 user companies in Europe.
X still affected by the DSA
However, the Commission concluded on Wednesday, after five months of investigation, that professional users of X (formerly Twitter) were not dependent on this platform. The European executive considered in a press release that the social network X “should not be designated as an essential platform service within the meaning of the DMA”.
The social network therefore escapes the specific constraints imposed by the DMA in terms of competition, such as the obligation to inform Brussels of any planned acquisition of a digital company in Europe, whatever the size of the target.
The DMA also requires designated companies to interoperate instant messaging services and regulates the use of user data. This regulation completes the traditional European legislative arsenal on competition.
The company of American billionaire Elon Musk, however, remains covered by the other new European legislation to regulate the internet, the Digital Services Regulation (DSA) which governs content posted online.
Suspected of disseminating false information and illegal content, X is already formally indicted and risks heavy fines for several violations of the DSA.
