2 Amendments of Jens GIESEKE related to 2020/0374(COD)
Amendment 162 #
Proposal for a regulation
Recital 40 a (new)
Recital 40 a (new)
(40 a) A serious imbalance of bargaining power and, consequently, unfair practices is not only demonstrated in relation to gatekeepers’ business users but can also affect other actors in the digital value chain. Particularly their status as an important gateway and the related vast and growing internet traffic levels they generate enable gatekeepers to leverage their bargaining power in negotiations with the operators of transport and access networks as well as Internet Access Service Providers. The networks must handle gatekeepers’ vast amounts of traffic and ensure through efficient IP interconnection that gatekeepers’ services can be reliably accessed and utilized both by end users and business users. They thus critically hinge on the availability and quality of gatekeepers’ core platforms services. The importance of their core platform services for end users and business users in combination with the threat of consciously rerouting their traffic to cause congestion and create extensive quality degradations offers gatekeepers a critical leverage when commercially negotiating the contractual conditions for IP Transport. Causing congestion would not only impact the quality of the gatekeeper’s own services but cause collateral damage in limiting the performance of third-party services, ultimately impeding end users’ and business users’ internet experience. Hence, in addition to having the ability to leverage their gatekeeping power from core platform services to ancillary services, gatekeepers have the ability and incentive to leverage their gatekeeper power to extract unfair terms and conditions for IP Transport. Gatekeepers should therefore be obliged to treat network operators and Internet Access Service Providers fairly and not to exploit their gatekeeping position in commercial negotiations.
Amendment 448 #
Proposal for a regulation
Article 5 – paragraph 1 – point f a (new)
Article 5 – paragraph 1 – point f a (new)
(f a) refrain from leveraging its gatekeeper power by applying fair conditions in commercial negotiations for IP Transport;