European official offers defense of reported publisher rules

The European Union’s digital commissioner says new rules that would give publishers more leverage with aggregation platforms aren’t about targeting American companies.

Günther Oettinger said that the proposed rules were about balance, “not against anybody, not against American platforms, but in the interest of our creative sector and to stabilize their business cases,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

{mosads}The European Commission will reportedly include the measure as part of new copyright rules it will propose later this month. Publishers would get “bargaining power” over platforms like Google News, which publish parts of an article, under the proposal, according to an earlier Journal report.

The directive from the commission could be announced later this month and would have to be adopted by member states. Oettinger’s comments suggest that the rules are likely to raise more questions about the relationship between European regulators and American tech companies, which have grown to be global powerhouses.

Last week, the European Commission ruled against Apple in a case over the company’s taxes, sticking the computer giant with a $14.5 billion back taxes bill.

“I have been concerned that it reflected an attempt to reach into the U.S. tax base to tax income that ought to be taxed in the United States,” said Treasury Secretary Jack Lew last week.

The European Commission has also pursued antitrust cases against Google, but the bloc’s competition chief has said its not motivated by a bias against American firms.

“As I said, the nationality of a company is a nonrelevant fact,” European Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said last year. “Nonetheless, some claim that when our casework involves giants like Apple or Google, [it] is an evidence of bias. But this is a fallacy.”