Stéphanie Yon-Courtin
by Thibault Larger, Laura Kayali
Sep 24, 2020, 2:43 PM
Big Tech companies should be banned from lobbying EU lawmakers if their CEOs keep refusing to testify before the European Parliament, warned MEP Stéphanie Yon-Courtin.
Key EU lawmakers want a hearing with Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Google’s Sundar Pichai and Apple’s Tim Cook, following an idea the Renew Europe politician has championed since July after U.S. lawmakers grilled the four CEOs.
“If they refuse to talk to us, we will shut the Parliament’s doors to them. We can forbid their lobbies or their representatives to speak to us,” the French MEP told POLITICO in an interview.
The Conference of Presidents (CoP), which gathers presidents of the Parliament’s political groups, is set to decide whether to hold such a hearing and which Parliament committee — the economic affairs or the internal market committee — will take the lead. No date is fixed yet, but Yon-Courtin is confident that the COP will give the go ahead.
“We want their number ones, nobody else,” she said, and “if they won’t talk to us, we won’t talk to them.”
It is not certain how the threat could play out in practice in times of Covid where most meetings are held online. But blocking access to the Parliament could be a blow to the four companies as EU lawmakers are seeking to regulate the tech giants as part of the Digital Services Act.
“We’ve already asked them to come, so far they’ve always refused,” Yon-Courtin said. “I’m not going to give up.”
