Regulation or prohibition?
The Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), a US think tank of which I am a senior fellow, has published an article of mine, in which I discuss how the European approach to managing Chinese platforms such as TikTok, Shein or Temu through regulation, may end up in the medium and long term being superior to the US decision to ban them or in the case of TikTok, force the owners to sell to a domestic company, the outcome of which will now be decided in the courts.
The article is titled “Ban Chinese platforms? No, Europe regulates them”, and looks at ways to counter the negative impact of these companies, bearing in mind that democracies should not behave in the same way as autocratic regimes do, and also that there are equally pernicious US platforms that need to be regulated. It is not at all clear that TikTok has posed a greater danger to European citizens’ fundamental rights than Meta.
In this sense, dynamic legislative packages such as the Digital Services Act (DSA) which affect all competitors equally, regardless of their origin, and which are likely to impose hefty fines, offer a better way of laying the foundations for what the European Union considers can and cannot be done, as well as protecting the rights of its citizens.
Is that enough? Does the DSA have the teeth to do the job? Probably not, so the solution is for it to not only…
