The European Commission will "proceed with [the] provisional application" of the Mercosur trade deal with Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, the commission's chief Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday. The deal was signed in January after over 25 years of negotiations, despite opposition from some European farmers.
The crunch moment in Google's antitrust battles with the Justice Department over its ad tech stack looms ever closer, with Justice Leonie Brinkema expected to issue her remedies ruling by the close of Q1. While these deliberations take place in the chambers of a courtroom in the Eastern District of Virginia, developments elsewhere underscore the political undercurrents at play, namely the push to limit Big Tech's power.
The European Commission has contacted Swedish authorities after citizens from Ireland were told that their EU passports were not sufficient proof of identity in citizenship applications. Several Irish citizens have contacted The Local to complain of the problem, which has arisen as a result of an order given to the Migration Agency by the Swedish government in January, telling them to increase the security checks in citizenship applications.
The tech firm filed the complaint with the European Commission (EC) back in September 2024, accusing Microsoft of trying to lock customers into Azure by making it difficult and costly to shift workloads to rival clouds, such as those offered by Google and AWS. Google called for regulators to force Microsoft to allow customers to use their licenses for Windows Server on any cloud at no additional cost.
Hungary's EU commissioner has denied any knowledge of alleged attempted spying by the Hungarian government during his time as the country's top diplomat in Brussels, a commission spokesperson said. Oliver Varhelyi sat down with European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, on Sunday to discuss the allegations reported by a consortium of investigative journalists last week. On Monday, the commission's chief spokesperson, Paula Pinho, said:
SAP has proposed concessions to the European Commission to address competition concerns. The German company hopes that these proposals will prevent a costly investigation. This is according to sources at Reuters. Without an agreement, the company risks a fine of up to 10 percent of its annual global turnover. For a company the size of SAP, that could amount to several billion euros.
After President Vladimir Putin sent his army into Ukraine in 2022, the United States and its allies prohibited transactions with the Russian central bank and finance ministry and blocked €350bn of sovereign Russian assets, mostly European, US and British government bonds held in a European securities depository. Reuters reported that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants the European Union to find a new way to finance Ukraine's defence against Russia using the cash balances associated with Russian assets frozen in Europe.
The EC found Google guilty of exercising a monopoly and fined the company 3 billion Euros ($3.5 billion). It's a deliberately eye-popping fine and the third such decision against Google at the hands of the commission. Google has 60 days to propose a plan to end its self-preferential practices to the EC. But there's an unbridgeable gap. While outwardly bold, the statement leaves plenty of room for equivocation - "at this stage" and "it appears" are clear hedges.
