Brussels, 25/03/2022 – The Pirates in the European Parliament welcome the final trilogue outcome of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) that was negotiated yesterday. Representatives of the EU Parliament, the Council and the Commission have agreed on including interoperability requirements for messaging services. According to Pirates, this will allow more choice for users, who will no longer be forced to use multiple platforms for private messenger communication.
Marcel Kolaja MEP, Member of the Czech Pirate Party and Greens/EFA shadow rapporteur in the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, comments:
“I’m glad that the obligation on interoperability was adopted. Thanks to our pressure, messaging services of gatekeepers will need to enable interoperability with other messaging services free of charge. This will be of enormous benefit to users who will have a better choice to move to more privacy friendly services.”
Patrick Breyer MEP, Member of the German Pirate Party, comments:
“Our win on interoperability is a crucial blow against the dependency on data-hungry and consumer-hostile Whatsapp. For the first time users will be able to switch to privacy-friendly alternative messengers and still stay in touch with their contacts who stick to Whatsapp. Secure interoperability, true consumer choice and competition will hopefully become a normality for messengers and later also for social networks.”
The final text now has to be adopted for the very last time by the European Parliament which is expected to be done in July. Together with the Digital Services Act (DSA), the DMA is one of the core elements of the EU’s Digital Strategy.
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