Czech Business Today
Online Platforms Discussed at V4 Digital Day
At the beginning of November, Permanent Representation of the Czech Republic to the EU hosted V4 Digital Day, an event that brought together representatives of companies, business and diplomatic representation, EU institutions representatives and much more to discuss current technological development of Visegrád Group countries, i.e. Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.
Apart from presenting successful technological companies from the region, the debate focused also on policy issues related to the digital single market. One of the main topics of the discussion was the public consultation on the regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy. The main aims of the public consultation were presented by DG Connect representative, who said that platforms are currently a very hot topic and the Commission, therefore, wants to collect relevant data that would help them assess the environment of platforms and decide, whether there is a need for regulation or not. Representatives of technological companies agreed that the need of EU regulation focused on platforms should be very well assessed.
The possible future legislation should not deal with issues that should be rather dealt with antitrust policy and should not regulate only a couple of big players on the market. Furthermore, companies believe that EU should not prevent American platforms active on EU market from further growth and should treat all platforms equally.
