EU commissioner Vestager to US for tech company consultations
European Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager is due to travel to the US this week for talks with Apple, Broadcom and Nvidia.
Vestager will meet Apple CEO Tim Cook, Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai and his chief legal officer Kent Walker, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in San Francisco and Palo Alto on Thursday and Friday.
She will also meet with OpenAI chief technology officer Mira Murati and chief strategy officer Jason Kwon.
The meetings will generally focus on European digital regulation and competition policy.
On Apple, the EU will soon take a decision ow alleged anti-competitive practices in the App Store. If found guilty, Apple could face a significant fine and a ban on its App Store rules. The investigation was triggered by a complaint from Spotify, a Swedish music streaming service, which said Apple’s practices forced them to raise subscription prices.
In fact, the US Department of Justice is also preparing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple that is quite broad in scope. According to the New York Times, Meta, among others, has spoken with investigators. The focus will be on shielding technology making it harder for consumers to switch to competing products.
The meeting with Alphabet is the same day that an adviser to Europe’s highest court will make a non-binding recommendation on a fine the EU wants to impose on Google for e-commerce market abuse.
Vestager resumed her job as Commissioner after trying to become president of the European Investment Bank (EIB) last year. Belgian Eurocommissioner Didier Reynders took over her duties. The Dane had been in charge of fair competition in the common European market since 2014. However, she did not get the coveted job. That went to Spanish Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy Nadia Calviño.
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