Leaked doc: EU could fine tech giants like Google and Amazon as much as 10% of annual revenue for failing to comply with data usage rules to be unveiled Tuesday
Natalia Drozdiak / Bloomberg :
Context & Ripple Effects
This leak lands mid-arc in Brussels' shift from one-off antitrust cases to a standing penalty regime. The Commission told Google as far back as 2015 to expect fines large enough to act as a deterrent, went on to pursue its Search dominance case, and has more recently been preparing another action over Search self-preferencing and app-developer restrictions.
Separately, leaked drafts of the EU's AI rules already floated bans on social scoring and surveillance uses with fines up to €20M or 4% of turnover. Today's document extends the same enforcement logic from specific AI uses to data usage generally — and names Google and Amazon directly.
First-order effects
- Google and Amazon learn their worst-case exposure before the rules are even published: up to 10% of annual revenue for non-compliance with data usage requirements set to be unveiled Tuesday.
- Because the ceiling leaked ahead of the announcement, both companies get a lobbying window on the final text that smaller firms without Brussels footprints do not.
Second-order effects
- The Commission is porting its antitrust playbook — deterrence-sized fines calibrated to the target's finances — into data regulation, so every future EU digital rule arrives pre-priced at revenue scale rather than per-violation.
- With the AI draft's 4%-of-turnover cap alongside this 10% proposal, Brussels is converging on revenue-proportional penalties as its default tool, forcing US platforms to budget EU compliance as a recurring percentage of global revenue rather than a litigation risk.
Third-order effects
- If a 10%-of-revenue ceiling becomes the standing template for platform rules, effective compliance costs scale with company size and EU market access acquires a price only hyperscalers can fully internalize — a structural advantage for regional competitors.
- Repeated leaks of draft texts before formal publication are becoming part of the process itself, shifting the real negotiating battleground from enacted law to the drafting table.
The trend: The EU is replacing case-by-case antitrust fines with standing, revenue-proportional penalty regimes spanning data and AI, turning compliance ceilings into a structural cost of serving European users.