On 17 February 2021, the Competition and Market Authority (“AGCM”) imposed a fine of 7 million Euros on Facebook Ireland and its parent company Facebook Inc. for having failed to comply with a measure issued by AGCM on 29 November 2018. Moreover, this was the same order according to which the Menlo Park company had previously been ordered to pay a 5 million Euro fine as a result of it failing to inform its users that their personal data would be used for commercial purposes.
This additional measure – which really is just “the fine applied to the fine ” – necessarily makes us think about the actual coercive force of the economic fines issued by AGCM as well as the latter’s choice on insisting with fines that are similar to those already issued in 2018 despite the ascertained non-compliance – and therefore ineffectiveness – of those same fines (we have already discussed this topic in a previous article, available here).
So, could it be that the time has come to readjust the content and scope of sanctioning measures that are issued to protect the market and free competition, especially when they are aimed at giant online companies? Could one, for example, envisage a measure of the Authority that would temporarily block the online services offered until the company regularizes its position? Or could we witness the temporary removal of an application from the App/Play Store, making it impossible for the company to acquire new users? Or – again – will we see fines that are proportional to the total annual turnover of a company or its group (similar to the “GDPR” style)?
In our opinion, a concrete solution can only lie in the correct balancing of the interests at stake: on the one hand, the private interests of the multinationals who, by means of their social networks, acquire huge quantities of personal data (and, therefore, of “money”); on the other hand, the interests of online users who use the main social platforms on a daily basis, often not just for “scrolling leisure” but also for professional and business reasons.